User:Lenoxus/Subpages/Public/Essays/Wikipedia does not exist


 * Note: Despite its counterintuitive nature, this essay is in fact not meant to be humorous, but rather an attempt to understand Wikipedia and contrast this with common sense.

There is no such thing as Wikipedia.

Before you scoff, allow some elaboration for this point. Frequently, statements which include the word "Wikipedia" go somewhere along the lines of, "According to Wikipedia, L is the largest M in the world," or "Wikipedia policy states that Q." This is not quite the case. Rather, what the speaker means is "this is what may be found on Wikipedia as of 11:34 GMT on March 30, 2007."

You may think this is an unimportant distinction, and perhaps you'd be right. But consider that as the world's largest, wiki, this site changes at such a staggering rate that it's almost absurd to speak of it as if it were a single cohesive "thing." Rather, it is an unbelievably dynamic force generated from principles of collaborative editing, and as such, statements referring to its particular details should always be made with a grain of salt, because even the most fundamental policies — except, perhaps, the overall goal of granting all people the sum total of human knowledge — are subject to change. The only-partly-tongue-in-cheek "current event" template on this page is meant to reflect this. Pretend that every person you meet discussing Wikipedia, or every text you read about it, has that little box floating overhead.

To an extent, this viewpoint, if true, renders irrelevant such questions as "is Wikipedia reliable?", or more specific ones like "is the Wikipedia article on Charles Atangana reliable?" Instead, the deeper question becomes, "Is the February 15, 2007 version of Charles Atangana, which is when it attained featured status, and was therefore presumably considered accurate by Wikipedia standards, reliable?" In principle, the answer should be "yes" — but see the related essay Quality before reputation before jumping to any conclusions on the matter.

The obvious analogy for this concept is that of Heroditus, who famously claimed that one can never step into the same river twice. Likewise, it is impossible to "step into" the same article or policy twice, and just as difficult to enter the non-existant "brain" of the imaginary researcher named "Wikipedia."