User:Bicycle Wheel/RationalWikiWiki M

Malicious block

A malicious block is a block issued by a RationalWiki Sysop which a rational and neutral editor would find inappropriate.

Duration of block

Blocks sometimes last for an indefinite number of seconds, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, and occasionally even longer still.

Circumstances

• When a Sysop is in debate with another user or Sysop and uses the block power in anger.
• When Sysop wishes to silence or intimidate a troublesome user with whom they have an intellectual or emotional difference of opinion.
• When a Sysop wishes to punish a user (or another Sysop) for doing something the Sysop personally doesn’t like but which is not covered by site standards.
• When a Sysop really can't be bothered to argue.

Common lame complaints from blockees

• This place is just like Conservapedia!

Common lame excuses from blockers

• It was only n seconds or n minutes.
• X is also a sysop, so they could have unblocked themselves.
• I think they deserved it.
• If this were Conservapedia I would have given you an infinite block, so count yourself lucky.

Consequences

It depends on who received the block, if they complain, and who stands up for them. They may precipitate Headless Chicken Mode.

MCWiki

“”This wiki is a revolutionary brotherhood. This wiki is not devoted to free speech. This wiki is not devoted to liberty.

—MarcusCicero

File:CP family tree.svg

MCWiki, contrary to what one might think, was not a wiki about McDonalds, nor a wiki on MCs. It was a rather small and deliciously pitiful wiki about Rationalwiki and Rationalwikiwiki, written from the PoV of MarcusCicero, set in some alternate universe where green is up, down is horses, dogs and cats live together in sin, and RationalWiki is a totalitarian nation state. In practice, all editing was either done by the Big Mac himself, John Childermass, Eira, some random wandals, Maratrean and somebody called 107. Human, Ace, Colonel Sanders, and Nx all had accounts, but didn't seem to do much. DMorris did show up to post screeds as well. The site was overly lock happy, with several of the articles and all the category pages locked at the sysop level. At some point between 5:43 and 7:22 CST November 24 2011, the Big Mac disabled all editing by non-sysops, and was made available to editors for brief periods when either Big Mac or Maratrean were present to delete and oversight any "counterrevolutionary" discussion.

It has since become a wiki actually about hamburgers, presumably to add insult to injury and mock Marcus' original wiki and its name.

McStyle

Citations were apparently unneeded. Nor did it have any need for templates or images.

It should be noted that the style guidelines were allegedly recommendations, not rules, but the first template ever created was swiftly deleted. If you point out Marcus's spelling and grammatical errors, he will claim that they are intentionel. Marcus later changed his mind on images, and added added a few.

Big Mac's technical knowledge was very limited, with anything more complex than categories overwhelming his brain capacity. His site being free of Aspies, nerds, virgins, and other Wiki-undesirables who do nothing but strange things with pointless templates, when Marcus felt inclined to use a template, he found himself out of his depth with no one to help him.

McContent

McWiki didn't have much content, aside from the usual screeds about P-Foster, Nx, David Gerard, the Moderators, and, most remarkably, Trent "the Lazy" Toulouse. The site also has some unusually positive articles about AKjeldsen, Doggedpersistence, and HeartOfGold. There is, of course, a locked article on Marcus. It was briefly written in Estonian, for some reason. For a brief time, article creation was disabled. Since the grand locking, the only "articles" created are Revolutionary Communiques, the contents of which are MC desperately claiming he has a life and arguing with user name vandalism, and articles by Maratrean about his imaginary religion.

McControversy

The existence of the wiki and the fact that some prominent RW editors (or people posing as them) and one RationalWiki Foundation trustee were contributing to the wiki caused a fuss in the Chicken Coop and Moderators discussion bin. In the blue corner, Psygremlin insisted that such activity was a violation of the "trust" of trustee, and in the brown corner Weaseloid argued that the contributions were spelling corrections and minor edits and counted as no such violation.

McBlocks

“”Yes, we ban. We give infinite bans for those who edit mainspace articles and insist on filling them with pro regime propaganda and hatred. These infinite bans can be overturned if the member sends an email and states that they will restrict their propaganda to talk pages. We give two hour bans to vandals who deliberately post nonsense in articles, under the delusion that they will err their ways.

MC has blocked several users for infinite durations, and one user for a day for being a "boring". . But was then unbanned. Marcus then added the above quote to the McWiki menu, likely having read this page. John Childermass was indefinitely banned after being outed by Eira, but has since been unbanned. Eira has since banned several users, claiming simultaneously that there are no rules and that there are rules, depending on whether she wants to ban someone. Eira later appeared to leave the site.

McManagement

A photo of MarcusCicero's management plans in action!

“”There will be no elections. This wiki is a revolutionary brotherhood with me as the supreme leader. When the revolution succeeds in its goals of crushing the brutal oligarchy this website will be closed and I will take my place as just another autonomous individual in the rationalwiki mobocracy.

—MarcusCicero

McLocks

File:MCWikiusercreation1.png

Oversight this, Maratrean!

File:MCWiki2.png

Concernedresident? What a ridiculous username!

Slightly more than a few of all pages have been locked. When it comes to actual content pages, however, MC has seen fit to lock almost two-thirds of the articles to the sysop level. The article on SusanG has been salted.

It would also appear that some form of Conservapedia-esque "night editing" mode has been implemented, with all pages being locked for editing. The only person editing is MC, who claims he has a life. Spoiler Alert: He does not. The McCabal (Human and Eira) are allowed to enable editing, however. This led to a burst of activity on the user creation log - the only remaining way users could communicate on the wiki. Since Maratrean's elevation to administrator, the User creation log is now oversighted.

McMadness

“”In time it will become the superior cousin of Rationalwikiwiki. once the regime grows tired of persecuting this website and launching waves of regime vandalism upon it, this website will begin to attract more dissidents, until this website eventually has more active members than Rationalwiki itself.

—MarcusCicero

MCWiki argues that the RationalWiki Foundation is actually a money-laundering operation being run by "The Sophist" (aka AD), who also heads a massive shadow cabal. It also argues that there is an "Aspie Culture" apparently founded by Totnesmartin.

McCoup

On January 11, 2012, the user "107" carried out a coup of sorts, removing the rights of all other bureaucrats and all other sysops except DMorris, uploading a picture of Joseph Stalin for a new logo, and stating that Marcus was a covert RationalWiki agent.

A few days later, Marcus posted a message stating that he had noticed the coup by means of this page and that he was not going to attempt to take MCWiki back. Fifteen minutes thereafter, he extended a fig leaf olive branch to RationalWiki, making a reciprocal accusation that 107 was a RationalWiki agent, and asking to be unblocked.

McPhone

Marcus feels the need to communicate with RW/W via "Revolutionary Communiques". At present there are 8, detailed here.

#1

Marcus responds to a comment by Nx, stating that if RW gives him publicity he won't "launch any revolutionary offensives". This hasn't been done, nor have any offenses been launched.

#2

In communique 2, Marcus feels the need to desperately assert that he has a life, and that Ty does not. He is not going to go sit in the corner and cry, but is merely "busy". He also attempts to hand off the tedious job of vandalism patrol to human and Eira.

#3

In Rev com 3, Marcus throws in the towel. Realizing that very few people support him, he closes the wiki to sysop editing only, inviting RWians to email him to request sysop rights, and not so he can fill their inbox with hateful abuse and try to stalk them. He takes the time to address P-Foster and AD, and complain that he is far, far too busy to continue editing.

#4

In Rev com 4, Marcus states that he isn't afraid of Internet vandalism, and that he believes that everyone who has ever edited/vandalized McWiki is a Tyrannis sock. He then states how silly it is to argue about things on the Internet. The fact that he created a wiki to complain about 2 wikis is apparently not relevant. Note that not being intimidated by wiki vandals requires the same amount of intestinal fortitude as not being afraid of your pet guppy.

#5

In Rev com 5, Marcus feels the need to repeat himself, and complain about this article. He is still so busy that he doesn't have time to write anything, but will write some essays soon. Presumably after he finishes the poem, novel, and play.

#6

MC is obviously rattled. He doesn't like it when somebody points out that he is a sex starved loser who spends 75% of his disposable free time on the internet trolling a small wiki. This pitiful little nerd, who hasn't a creative bone in his body, is deserving only of our contempt.

#7

Marcus has decided to add pictures to articles. He also comments on Crundy's leaving.

#8

Marcus threatens to release "thousands of emails" he has received from RationalWiki editors, Conservaleaks style, in early 2012. He calls this upcoming event "Rational-leaks."

McLANCB

On 19 January 2012, Marcus announced that he was closing McWiki after his computer was hacked, allegedly by a RationalWiki editor. He also announced that he was permanently retiring from the Ratwik, but nobody believes that anymore; nor did anyone give a shit.

On January 31 2012, MCWiki was deleted in response to objections raised by someone representing the RationalWiki Foundation on the Wikkii forums. (A member of the Wikkii staff noted "We've had problems in the past with people setting up wikis for harassment, but they get deleted... as soon as someone reports it.") Coincidentally, immediately afterwards, Gooniepunk re-registered the name "MCWiki" as a wiki about all things hamburger.

Memes

Like most of the rest of Web2.0, RationalWiki has been blessed with a variety of Memes from its inception. While a few have been lifted from other bits of the internet, many are original. This is a list of them:

More-or-less original memes

Ace McWicked

Main article: Ace McWicked

Ace's ability to withstand mind altering substances, sheer machismo, and raw sex appeal

RW's joke detector has detected jokes in the following. Warning:Humor levels may vary. Please don't say,"This is a joke, right?" or act like this is serious on the talk page.

have elevated him to meme status. Ironic considering he hates memes.

Asperger's syndrome

Main article: Asperger's syndrome

Accusations of Asperger's, usually tongue in cheek abound. It is sometimes used as an insult however.

Denmark

A very old meme inspired by the nationality of AKjeldsen. As of 2011, sightings of this meme are as rare as good Twilight books.

Ey

A gender-neutral pronoun, favoured by professional gobshite mathematics PhD Michael Spivak meaning "he," "she" or "they" - like most of these pronouns, none are really "official" in the English language and aren't used particularly consistently. On RW, this word was used by Lumenos as part of the weird language/philosophy/whatever-it-is he promotes. Outside of Lumenos's brain, it is used snarkily to state that the subject has a unique opinion of some sort. Eir is the possessive form of the word.

Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

Started after DMorris claimed that he had reported RW to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. on 15 April 2011 After some early sightings it has become a template and a block reason.

Ferrets

The ferret overlords once ruled the wiki but now are heard of no more. Imagine the statue of Ozymandias as an elongated bitey animal and that's what the state of the meme is. Occasionally resurges due to Weaseloid having acquired some pet ferrets.

Goat

Main article:Goat

So much a meme that the whole site could just call itself GoatWiki, the unaccountable prevalence of goat jokes had humble origins - PalMD liked goats, and wrote about them. From this little acorn grew the mighty oak which gives RW its unique flavour. And distinct smell.

Helena Bonham-Carter

A very old meme which possibly began in the RationalWiki 1.0 days, references to (and even claims to be) that actress had mostly disappeared by the summer of 2007.

Human's wiki

From the dominance of Human over the entire wiki (he still outranks pretty much every other editor in terms of edit count and even Ty's binges haven't come close) and the fact that he would stick his neck in to disagree with most things - often vehemently. Basically leading to the accusation of "oh, it's Human's wiki" to dismiss every single one of his suggestions, even the good ones. This meme relates to "stop breaking my wiki".

"I want not approve on it, I think [adjective] post"

Deliberately started by Crundy[5] and kicked off by SuperJosh[6][7] after an odd and useless spambot posted on the chalkboard talk page[8].

Long-eared Jerboa

We have no idea how this got started, honest, as it is older than Jesus and nearly as old as Helena Bonham Carter. The Long-eared Jerboa is the secondary mascot of RW, narrowly behind the goat. Probably a holdover from the days when I Can Haz Cheeseburger was funny (if it ever was), it is an extension to the general meme that the internet finds small cute animals inherently fascinating. The video of the pygmy jerboa standing on a set of scales (and weighing in at 3.2g) also made one or two appearances.

Mei is useful

The perceived usefulness of Mei. "Useful for what?" we hear you say, but that's beside the point, now shut up. Developed from the "Mei is useful" userbox, Mei's special welcome template, and the category "Users who are useful beyond a reasonable doubt". While he is, no one for example says "P-Foster is useful". That said, Mei is incredibly useful.

Mowses

Main article: Mowse

A short lived craze for multi-coloured pictures of mice plagued the wiki for a few months, then fizzled out just as quickly.

"Stop breaking my wiki"

A pompous phrase originating in March 2010, probably inspired by Human's attitudes towards Nx,^{[citation needed]} which encapsulates the attitudes of the hardline Old Guard (i.e. Human and a few cronies) in their sense of prerogative and resistance to change. After its first appearance, the phrase has invariably been used jokingly; so much so, that when somebody's response to something is "stop breaking my wiki", it is hard to tell whether they are expressing genuine disapproveal (in a jokey way) or just kidding.

"This isn't your circle jerk anymore"

See the main article on this topic: Not your circle jerk anymore

A pompous phrase coined by Brxbrx in May 2011, and used by him once or twice since, which encapsulates the attitudes of uppity johnny-come-latelies (i.e. Brxbrx and a few cronies) in their sense of prerogative and resistance to the Old Guard. As with "stop breaking my wiki", the phrase has been appropriated for mockery, mostly at the expense of Brxbrx himself, and his laughable attempts to dictate which users should be taken seriously.

Conservamemes

To be honest there are dozens of Schlafmemes we could include... but here are the main ones.

Assfly

Main article: Assfly

ASchlafly > Assfly. It's obvious, innit?

Assquote

The act of using the Schlafly Quote Generator to respond to editors comments, often when there is nothing better to say. Since the generator has become a remarkably accurate pseudo Markov Chain of Schlafly's style, it's possible people take this sort of thing as genuine abuse. Especially since the "subst" command can remove all traces of the template and just paste in the text.

"Growing rapidly"

An early catchphrase at Conservapedia was "this site is growing rapidly", in reference to the pageviews and increase in article count (although not necessarily information count thanks to the likes of Ed Poor's stubs). Since this was used in all seriousness on Conservapedia, the WIGO:CP clientèle began to use it sarcastically when commenting on the article shrinkage or deletion that began to be increasingly common as CP developed. Considering the current state of CP activity, if it grew any more "rapidly" it would collapse down into a black hole.

hell

Andy mentioned that spelling "Hell" with a small h is a sign of liberalism (rather than what it actually is, a simple grammar error). Since then, RWians have trumpeted their liberal credentials when typing Hell, by deliberately using a small h. Often this is combined with strikeout humour, e.g., hHell or Hhell, depending on the situation. It almost reached the point where every mention of the word hell, regardless of how trival, made reference to this, although Post-Conservapedia users may remove more gratuitous uses. The article on Hell once contained an entire section on the controversy, a lowercase title and a note about the title being incorrect due to liberal deceit, but this has since been removed.

Kendoll

Refers to User:Conservative on Conservapedia, whose real name is Ken DeMyer, and is usually signified by the {{Ken}} template.

Kenning

Some RationalWikians refer to multiple markup and spelling corrections as kenning (sometimes quoting him instead), referring to the editing "skills" of the above. Slightly confusing to certain RationalWiki editors who upon seeing the word "kenning" immediately think "metaphor from Old Norse skaldic poetry."

A sometimes-used synonym is "OSing," especially in the context of WIGOs and the bar (where Osaka has been known to display Ken-like editing patterns).

"The truth shall set you free/open your mind to the truth"

"The truth shall set you free" says Conservapedia, and RWians repeat it when laughing at CP's idiotic logical failings and factual errors but also as a form of snarkasm elsewhere. "Open your mind to the truth or risk losing credibility" and "deny this and lose all credibility" are also common variants, almost bordering on becoming true catchphrases.

Weapon of gun

In February 2008, Aschlafly used this clumsy phrase in CP's "liberal logic" article, stating that liberals believe that "widespread ownership of the largely defensive weapon of gun must not reduce crime". The amusing phrase "weapon of gun" proved popular at RW, as did the "largely [adjective] [noun] of [noun]" construction, which was still making occasional (and not particularly welcome in the post-Conservapedia era) appearances in mainspace more than four years later.

"Because liberals"

Conservapedia's tendency to blame liberals for quite literally everything has been summed up several times in wigos by the nifty little phrase "because liberals", as in "x happened because liberals", or "x happened. Why? Because liberals." The laziness of the phrase itself highlights Conservapedia's unimaginative and tired use of blaming liberals for everything, more often than not without any evidence or by otherwise incredibly bizarre thought lines.

3:16

John 3:16 became a common topic at TWIGO:CP around the time that Tim Tebow was in vogue at Conservapedia, though of course the verse's popularity in the real world pre-dates this. Both DickTurpis and π's mobile account, Pimobile, sign with "Turpis 3:16" and "Pi 3:14" respectively.

Mob

The mob is the collection of all the random arbitrary whims of all the editors at RationalWiki. Some people tend to think of "the mob" as if it were like "the people" in a democracy, but the distinction is different, as "the mob" does everything and anything it wants, including fighting within itself to get anything done. The "consensus" of the mob in debates is arrived at through wheel wars and edit wars, and one side eventually giving up. It is important to note, however, that this sort of "consensus" is fleeting and subject to overturning the very instant anyone disagrees again. Consensus at any time is basically a combination of the number of supporters multiplied by their audacity. The meek and weak willed, even with a majority support, will still not get their way. Meanwhile single members of the mob with enough tenacity can rule.

Thus, the mob is not a collection of people, but rather of spurious whims. The mob does not lynch someone because the majority of the mob has voted that such a lynching should be done, but because no other part of the mob opposes the other part of the mob that wants to do the lynching enough to stop the lynching.

Moderators

“”The Moderators are here! the Moderators will solve everything! The Moderators will definitely not go the way of the Loya Jirga! There never was a Loya Jirga! All is well! Peace and harmony prevail! Return to your duties!

—Totnesmartin, Rrose Selavy

The most visible change in site structure caused by the Trial of Human and The Saloon Bar Putsch was the creation of moderators. Tmtoulouse|Trent first proposed the idea for seven moderators on May 17th, 2011, waited for feedback, and initiated the plan in mid June. The first elections were held from June 14th to June 28th, resulting in the the first batch of the mysterious new moderators.

How to tell if someone is a moderator

They might have a silver brainstar in their sig, though most do not observe this practice. RW's ListUsers page lists current mods.

Duties of Moderators

According to here:

“” The main function of the moderator is to monitor conflicts and use the tools they are given to keep discussions from veering off in directions that are harmful to the community and the site. The second function of the moderators is to help boot-strap certain policies or procedures that we struggle with. A great example of this is how to vote for something, how long does a vote last, when does it pass or fail, what should even be voted on? There is no way to address these issues without some people having the power to set a certain amount of basic policy. Moderators, in consultation with the community and each other, can begin to help us develop a structure of procedures for running the site.

In effect, their role is to close votes, as that is the only thing they can do without anyone claiming that they are overstepping their mandate, which remains ill-defined.

Effectiveness

Mods have shown an effort to reform the community standards, which fits under the second job. They have enforced community consensus, such as the banning and reverting of MarcusCicero and MC-esque BoN edits. And they've closed a few chicken coop cases.

Questions about the extent of their authority have arisen, especially in the face of what several have argued was sloppy handling of the resignations of P-Foster and Ace McWicked. AD and Blue were criticized for overzealously enforcing the various bans of MarcusCicero and his IPs.

Nx has been criticized for desysopping both Ace McWicked and BbMaj7 for 9 hours after "abusing" Brxbrx.

Resignations

P-Foster was the first to resign, and once the moderators noticed, they appointed the runner up, Blue, as a replacement. Ace McWicked resigned the next month, and the few moderators who bothered to weigh in on a replacement felt an election was necessary after the next runner-up (Psygremlin) declined the position. After several users pointed out the inconsistency, Blue resigned after a very short tenure. An election for two replacement mods was implemented in mid September.

Timeline

Election of July 2011	By-election of September 2011*	Election of January 2012	Election of July 2012	Election of January 2013
Ace McWicked		Ace McWicked
AD
Genghis Khant
Nutty Roux
Π
P-Foster
Weaseloid			Weaseloid
	Blue
	Nx
		DickTurpis
		Human
		WaitingforGodot
			Armondikov
				David Gerard
				KnightOfTL;DR
				PeterL

* Not contested by incumbents, save Ace McWicked, who had recently resigned.

Footnotes