Retro Yakking

Image by Huge at Guffaw Comics.

Disclaimer: Retro Yakking does not condone vandalism on Wikipedia: that would be detrimental to Illogico-Wikipedian relations, and just plain wrong. Whatever you decide to do there has no relevance to the article you read here… you heard nothing. Do what the heck you like with Wikia, though.

Maybe you’ve been flamed by a stuck-up Wikifreak or perhaps had all your articles wiped by a power-crazed administrator on a deletion spree. Bottom line is, you’ve decided you want to vandalise Wikipedia for one reason or another, and are preparing for the assault that will cripple the site from the bottom up.

Right. So I’m ready to nuke the ‘pedia.

Well, first of all you need a plan. Whatever you do, don’t just blindly blank articles - that’s the beginner’s way to do things, earning you a quick block before you have made even a minimum of damage on the Wikifreaks’ egos. If you reeeeally want to cheese them off, you’re going to have to resort to more creative methods of vandalism.

• Irritate administrators and waste their time by asking them pointless questions on their talkpage, preferably one that’s been answered numerous times elsewhere. If no reply is received within a day, copy paste the same message to a new comments section, repeating for every twenty four hours you do not get a reply.
• Insert the ‘citation needed’ template at random positions in articles: you will notice that half the time they do not get reverted. That’s because Wikipedia is so full of holes the likelihood is that your edits will actually be constructive, such is the Wiki-world.
• Make varied and idle threats that you have created a worm all set to bring the “Wikipedia servers to the ground, even the one in Siberia”. Furthermore, claim that you work for the government, have access to the names and addresses of each and every administrator at the site, and at the press of a button can add them to the sex offender’s database.

The piece de resistance

Get permission or rent out each and every computer in your local library. Gather a group of schoolkids from the nearest Secondary and instruct them each to register with Wikipedia. Then, show them how to move pages by demonstrating the process on a skeleton wiki such as any of those at Wikia.org. Send them home with the homework assignment of ‘becoming a master pagemover’ by training themselves on a wiki you set up especially for this occasion.

Get the kids to come back the next week, fully armed with an advanced knowledge of page moving. Instruct them to hit the “random page” link and move the article as quickly as possible en masse. Next, make them move the article they just moved to a whole new name, creating strange embedded double redirects (something administrators hate). Allow them to do this as many times as possible before they are banned, or before the whole IP is rangeblocked after approximately ten minutes.

Congratulations! You have just got your whole library blocked from editing on Wikipedia!

If the schoolteacher asks what on earth you have been doing, tell them that you were simply “showing them how to use Wikipedia,” which you were.

A final word to Wikipediacs

I know very well that this article could get me banned from Wikipedia, but I’m willing to take that risk all for the sake of a small piece of geeky humour, damnit. It’s just a joke, Jimbo! Now, go and butter some bread or something.

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