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Humour

Predicting the 6,000,000th article

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By Mercurywoodrose and Smallbones

Sooner or later every Wikipedian will enjoy their 15 minutes of Wiki-fame. Mercurywoodrose is now getting his, having won the 6,000,000 pool by most closely predicting when Wikipedia would record its 6,000,000th article. He predicted that the milestone would be reached on December 1, 2019. Second place goes to ϢereSpielChequers who predicted September 12, 2019. The Signpost proposed a serious interview with Mercurywoodrose. He did not cooperate. -S

  • Signpost: What are you going to do with the $6,000,000 prize? (just kidding!)
  • Mercurywoodrose: I don't know, but if i get in a catastrophic test plane accident and have my legs, one arm, and one eye destroyed, I know what I am doing with $6,000,000. Gentlepersons, they can rebuild me. They have the technology. They have the capability to build the world's first bionic Wikipedian. Mercurywoodrose will be that editor. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster, with more reliable sources.
  • SP: Do you remember why you made the December 2019 prediction 6 years ago?
  • MW: I figured I knew just enough about mathematics to make a somewhat accurate back of the napkin estimate for the date, factoring in a bit of the slowdown in new article creation, and believing that this downward trend in new articles would continue. I'm sure I must have done an actual calculation, but the methods I used would probably give an actual statistician apoplexy. It was a miseducated guess.
  • SP: What's the biggest change you've seen in Wikipedia in that time (other than a couple of million articles)?
  • MW: A team of editors with way too much time on their hands created an automation system for creating new Portals. What's a Portal, you ask? Exactly... On a side note, the biggest change that did NOT occur is that the Deletionists and the Inclusionists are still engaged in a Manichean struggle, with neither side winning. The proof of this is that the number of articles has not gone to zero, decreased by a factor of Thanos, or expanded to infinity and beyond.
  • SP: How many articles have you created?
  • MW: 310 using created by me, and adding up the total articles by HAND. Computers! Ha! Who needs them! I did get into the top 400 editors by edit count, which of course is a meaningless measure, but it was fun while it lasted.
  • SP: What's your prediction for the 8,000,000th article? (the 7,000,000 pool is closed)
  • MW: I cannot predict that, it's beyond my processing capacity as a quasi-quantum computer, but I know what i would LIKE it to be. An article about ME, of course. Hopefully for something worthwhile, not notorious. First Wikipedian to be shot into the Sun for being too sarcastic? Well, that's sort of both...
  • SP: What's your favorite article out of the last million created (since November 1, 2015)?
  • MW: Aside from my own articles created during this time, of which my favorite subject is Jen Bartel (she rocks), I don't know. How about new articles on things I like? My first thought, I really loved Joker. That article was created, oh, wow, on my birthday! I didn't expect that!.
  • SP: Anything else you want to add? Feel free to be serious, philosophical, sentimental, humorous, thank your mother, etc.
  • MW: I'm a little sad that new editors will be facing an ever more complete work, with fewer areas to expand without being an expert. Perhaps we should consider erasing Wikipedia every few decades, and recreating it from scratch, to give new editors that initial experience of joy and wonder that they can be part of this, not just an observer, by clicking that innocent little "edit" tab. But maybe there is hope, maybe that sense of wonder will persist into the future. I know I fell in love with Wikipedia, and while I'm no longer obsessed with editing, I may fall in love all over again.
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  • In all seriousness, did this interview have to be reclassified as a humour piece?​ --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:24, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • @QEDK: Replying in all seriousness. I am very much committed to getting a Humor column going in The Signpost. Perhaps this is another failed experiment on my part, but I'm going to keep on trying until enough folks tell me to stop. If anybody wants a shot at writing a humor column, please check in at the submissions page, or the Newsroom talk page, or email me. We were a bit worried that the six-millionth article would not come through before publication, so we looked to alternative stories about 6 million articles that we could run before the actual 6 millionth article, and found the prediction page. From there we got the idea of an interview and got back the funniest response I've seen for a long time. I didn't think it was appropriate for an interview story, which are usually quite serious. So we ended up here. End of serious comment. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:16, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • ​ No pressure, honestly, I found it to be fresh (a bit less on the humour, but that's just fine). And, fwiw I'm all for the humour column, albeit my tastes lie in obscure xkcd comics and sex experts giving advice to newlyweds on the Sunday edition. Best, qedk (t 桜 c) 18:27, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Smallbones: I support being classified as humor. better to get a gold star in Hell than a participation trophy in Heaven.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:49, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • @QEDK: Thanks! It looks like you'd be perfect for the job! I like the xkcd comics that I've seen, and I'd love to get a few of those in The Signpost. But there's so many that I find them hard to pick one and when I did I tried to find the right place to ask for a CC-by license and must have failed (they are now CC-by-NC). Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:49, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
          • @Smallbones: Hey Smallbones, long-time listener, first-time caller. I trust you remember me. :-) I've got Randall's contact info somewhere. I'll dig it up and shoot it your way, along with an introduction note. -Philippe (talk) 07:11, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
          • @QEDK: Give it a little time, and Mr. Monroe will likely produce an xkcd comic about the Signpost. Eventually, every Nerd-Adjacent topic will be the subject of an xkcd, and thus inch towards having a wikipedia article about it. Recursion calls.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:45, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
All this sounds wonderful to me. If I were to suggest topics for a comic on The Signpost, I'd say look at our last Humour column Jimbo and Larry walk into a bar ..., I particularly like:
What do you call a paid editor who won't accept cash? - A check user.
But maybe I have a different sense of humor than most. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:00, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost is looking for new talent.
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