Today, Sarah had the first episode I have ever seen of Wikipedia rage.

For those that don’t know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is editable by the users. So, if you find an article that you know something about, you can edit the article and add your knowledge. The central idea is that two heads are better than one, so billions of heads should be pretty damn good.

Anyways, Sarah created an entry for her online journal, Southern Spaces. It sat untouched for a while. Perhaps people were seeing it, but no one made any edits. Then, just recently, I added a link to the article on Emory’s wikipedia page. Within a day, someone had come to the Southern Spaces entry and flagged it as an advertisement by inserting a special {{advert}} tag into the text. Basically, by doing this, the visitor had made the statement that the entry was biased and did not belong on Wikipedia, at least not without editing to remove the bias.

When I saw this, I let Sarah know, and I re-edited the article. I read the article over a few times, and I could not find anything in it that seemed overly ad-like. So, I removed the {{advert}} tag. Meanwhile, Sarah was reading over the page history log and found the person who made the edit. Rather than being some anonymous Internet personality, it turned out to be one of the student employees working in the Emory Library. Moreover, he was working 3 cubicles down from Sarah on a related project.

Plenty of things can make Sarah angry, but badmouthing Southern Spaces is a quick and easy way to send her over the edge. Having a co-worker do it was the ultimate betrayal. So, with eyes ablaze, she politely confronted the miscreant. The entire conversation was cordial and professional, but I could feel the hatred rolling off of Sarah. I have been on the receiving end of that polite-yet-hateful smile before, and it is not a pleasant experience. I am somewhat surprised that she did not actually strangle him.

That is the first instance of Wikipedia rage I have seen, and I must say, it was quite educational. It got me thinking about Wiki-Rage as a whole. How long will it be before someone is assaulted/killed over a Wikipedia edit? I’m going to stake out my guess and say it will happen sometime in 2007, if it has not happened already.

For my part, I’m ready. I’ve even got a good line prepared for such situations. If I ever get in a shouting match over Wikipedia, the last word I’ll put in is, “I’m about to edit your face!” At that point, we settle it in old-school analog fashion.

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