User:Bicycle Wheel/RationalWikiWiki QR

Quote generators

The quote generators are a minifad on RationalWiki, consisting of a collection of randomised statements that are supposed to emulate the writing style of a particular individual. The first one was the Schlafly Quote Generator, and has grown from humble beginnings to become a mighty edifice. The next was the Ken Quote Generator, which doesn't work quite as well, because Ken's comments aren't as canned as Schlafly's, shortly followed by the Karajou Quote Generator, which doesn't work at all, because Karajou doesn't have a distinctive style of commenting.

ConservapediaUndergroundResistor decided that it would be amusing to make a quote generator of himself. Other RationalWikians were less than amused (see the talk page). There have been calls for sanity on the talk page of Javascap's self-made quote generator, as it is supposedly only the first step on the way towards quote generators for all RationalWikians.

A similar addiction, and confusing as hell to new users, presumably, has been the use of the "span username goes here" gimmick whereby a random (or non-random) assault appears to be directed towards the logged-in user reading it. While more experienced users eventually enjoy the ensuing hilarity, we only have to wonder how off-putting this "joke" might be to the casual editor who just signed up out of curiosity. π has attempted to rectify this by creating a script that adds "_{(Fake name)}" after them.

And then there are the "verb", "noun", and "adjective" templates, that some users insert into "welcoming" template additions, resulting in some fairly weird "welcome to the X X X of the internet" results.

Yet another are the fake "You have new messages" notices, which are identical in appearance to the normal one, but clicking the links generally leads to the log out page.

RationalWiki may yet outsmart itself with screwy in-jokes.

Example

The rapturous nostril crystallizes the execrating rapturous nostril.

RationalWikiWikiWiki

RationalWikiWikiWiki refers to various attempts by RW or RWW members to set up a wiki monitoring the goings-on at RationalWikiWiki (in much that same way that this site monitors RationalWiki).

For the most part, these have petered out and been abandoned within a matter of hours or days, due to boredom and lack of interest, and the fact that nothing much ever happens here, leaving no more "articles" than you could count on the fingers of one hand, or more content than you could read in ninety seconds. Mostly they exist only for mildly satirical purposes, and for speculating about the true identity of the totally mysterious Hans Johnson.

Rationalwikiwikiwiki [now defunct] was active from 16th April to 17th April 2008, edited exclusively by "rwwadmin" (no relation to RWW's Admin), and Icewedge. It no longer exists at all, let alone being actively updated.

Ratwikiwikiwiki dates from around the same period, and briefly involved Bohdan, AKjeldsen and Human. It is completely devoid of content, but did have a dancing banana where a brain would usually be found.

RationalWikiWikiWiki was set up by Pi in a corner of RationalWiki's funspace on 17th December 2008. Other than a parody of RWW's main page, it contains only stub articles. It is updated whenever anyone here remembers it exists.

To further the meta-meta silliness, Icewedge set up RationalWikiWikiWikisWiki on 25 January 2009, to document the RationalWikiWikiWikis listed above. On 2 March 2009, they decided to set up a WIGO RationalWikiWikiWiki so that they'd have something more than a main page.

Tisane and the Case of the Butthurt Pedophile

“”He's a highly experienced MediaWiki user and has also done some MW development. He buys the domain and he pays for hosting. Gives him owner control. There is very little anyone can do about that. And... he knows the law much better than the idiots here and on RW.

—Abd, on Tisane

“”This a courtesy notice regarding a Terms of Service violation... your account's web site(s) will be deactivated, access to your account will be disabled, and you will need to call our service line, (866) 573-HOST, option 5, to discuss and resolve the suspension of your account.

—Hostmonster's Terms of Service Department to Tisane

RationalWikiWikiWiki is a venture by Tisane (under the name "Leucosticte") active on-and-off from late August 2012. Its purpose appears to be publishing Tisane's essays promoting such topics as the "possible benefits of having sex with one's children", and providing an outlet for some of the butthurt he suffered in being banned from RationalWiki over this issue.

On September 11th, Tisane received a notification that the site was in violation of their webhost's Terms of Service, and he was forced to delete the essays relating to sexual conduct with minors. The following day, the site became inaccessible, but soon reappeared under a new webhost, complete with vast numbers of "boylove"-related stubs ported from other pro-pedophilia sites. Within a few days, Tisane moved the site to yet another new host.

As well as complaints from at least one of its webhosts, Leucosticte has received cease and desist requests from Tmtoulouse (Trent Toulouse), regarding RWWW's use of the RationalWiki Foundation's name and derivative logo. Refugee also took umbrage at Tisane's use of a RWW logo variation created by her.

Aside from Leucosticte, the site has been primarily edited by Abd (in between tedious bouts of LANCB), and a couple of unknowns. Some RationalWikians have turned up briefly, included Reckless Noise Symphony who added various recipes to the first edition of the site, and Ace McWicked, who mass-deleted much RWWW content.

Rational

The Rational in RationalWiki is one locus of conflict on the site. The word rational has only one meaning, that conforming to reason, but it is disingenuously used to mean different things by different groups. Some, especially the Gang of Four, equate "rational" and "rationalism" with "atheist" and "atheism". They and other atheists occasionally throw out the word "rational" like a talisman, believing it will automatically dispel anything they label "irrational", like religion. Needless to say, the somewhat smaller number of theists on the site, especially the Nag of Four, claim this practice is disingenuous. They maintain that the word has been hijacked by the atheists, and they point out, that it could also refer to a rational number. This latter argument has not been very persuasive. Both groups are probably correct within their own terms of reference, but the ambiguity does cause conflict. Obviously it would be nice to resolve this ambiguity, but as this might result in one group or another abandoning the wiki this is unlikely to happen in the near future.

RationalWiki Forums

The RationalWiki Forums were created on May 25, 2007, in order to provide a place of discourse without the accursed edit conflicts.

There were a number of open areas where things which may or may not have been relevant to the Wiki were discussed. There may also have been one or more secret areas.

Eventually nobody but spambots posted on the forum, so it was locked down and made read-only; later it disappeared during a server move.

There is also a slightly more active forum namespace on RationalWiki itself, which was intended as a replacement for the Saloon bar, but never really took off.

Possible secret areas

Cabal - initially a secret hangout for the Cabal, this board was quickly sniffed out by TK, leading to the creation of ...

Cabal 2 - this was set up by Linus, as a cunning expedient to make TK think that he had penetrated to the inner sanctum. It was populated by cut and pastes from the "real" forum.

That said, he has led people to believe that he has breached its security at least once: by means of Cracker giving him his password, so that "out of fairness" TK would see that Trent and AmesG's assurances they were working on other Cabal members to admit him were false. Using information gained there, TK supposedly created rationalwiki.info. It is now simply Cabal, and its members try to avoid discussing policy there, but are never very successful in doing so. Since the whole place has been mothballed for ages, the past tense should be inferred here.

Subversion - yet another hidden section of the RationalWiki Forums set up by RW Bureaucrat Linus for the not-so-subtle sockpuppet of TK whence to plan nefarious goals. Some of the original members there included Wikinterpreter and GodlessLiberal and AmesG.

Cabal 3.14 - ultra secret forum accessible only by tmtoulouse and his sock puppet where they argue with each other all day.

On 10 June 2009 there was a total of 7,265 posts in non public forum areas. On 8 October 2009 there was a total of 7,477 in non public forum areas. So more than half the number of posts in the total forum are in secret areas (so much for an open wiki) and between those two dates they have been averaging around 50 posts a month. That's almost two a day!

Notable sections of the Forum namespace

• Dinner Club
• Loya Jirga- completely empty

Irrelevant sections of the Forum namespace

• Sports, not updated since November 2010

RationalWiki

“”Existence as you know it is over. We will add your viewcounts and editcounts to our own. Your contributions will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

—Nx

RationalWiki is a website where people complain about Conservapedia and bitch at each other. It is also the inspiration for this fine site, which is many times better. RationalWiki is frequently disrupted by trolls because of their tolerance of the troll's idiocy, and their apparent inability to tell friend from foe.

RationalWiki and the rest of the internet

RationalWiki's sphere of influence.

Obviously, RationalWiki enjoys some notoriety with the site that spawned it, Conservapedia, along with CP's various other spin-offs (A Storehouse of Knowledge, Ameriwiki, and Conservative News and Views).

Another key draw to RW (and one that, unlike the Conservapedia-verse, is slowly growing) is that they supply several articles on common terms used in the skeptic and atheist blogospheres, such as Gish Gallop, Poe's Law, and Pascal's wager. This is the role — a succinct, unambiguously pro-science resource for freethinkers — that site founder Tmtoulouse has long promoted the site as fulfilling, with the Foundation Board presumably now promoting as well.

The uncompromising terms of RationalWiki naturally offends certain kinds of wackadoodles, and crackpots and batshit internet communities have increasingly started to notice and complain about the Wiki that's calls itself Rational but isn't rational as they define it. (These swathes of New Agers, racists, sexists, and ultraconservatives are collectively referred to as the "clogosphere.")

Additionally, traffic from RationalWiki occasionally affects other, smaller wikis, such as the alternative medicine wiki, Wiki4CAM (RWians trolled the site); the would-be failed-to usurper of Wikipedia , Citizendium (commentary at RW affected their policy discussions); and the wiki index, Wikisynergy (RWians sparked a major controversy).

Brief history of RationalWiki

File:CP family tree.svg

RationalWiki on the Conservapedia family tree

RationalWiki 1.0

See the main article on this topic: RationalWiki 1.0

The foundation of RationalWiki 1.0 remains controversial. According to the LA times it was founded by one Doctor Liptus, while others maintain that a shadowy figure known only as "ColinR" was responsible.

In any event, all the original cabal members were current or ex-Conservapedia editors trained in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations who turned their talents against CP, by alternating bouts of liberal mockery on RW, and horrific felonious internet wandalism sockpuppeteering on CP.

Shortly after its inception, RationalWiki 1.0, as it subsequently came to be called, was discovered by the sinister Special Discussion Group at Conservapedia. They infiltrated its loose security and began counter-operations (basically by banning all RW users from CP), resulting in the elimination of the original chaotic wiki, and its re-creation as the open, and slightly less dysfunctional, RW2.

RationalWiki 2.0

See the main article on this topic: RationalWiki 2.0

RW2 was launched in the wee hours between May 21 and 22, 2007. The new wiki claims its objectives are:

1. Analyzing and refuting the anti-science movement, ideas and people.
2. Analyzing and refuting the full range of crank ideas.
3. Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism.

Many suspect however that not all ties have been cut between the two wikis, and that editors from both RW and CP continue to edit each others' wikis. Notwithstanding this, a number of RW editors have expressed a desire to have no further part of CP and simply to follow their own agenda.

I heard you like server changes so I transferred you to a new server while you changed servers to a virtual server on a real server then back to a dedicated server again

Following server problems, RW2.1 was created, which was simply RW2 running on a better hosting service.

A few months later, RW 2.2 was created, which included a better MediaWiki, though it broke the choose function.

On November 14th 2010, RW switched to a commercial hosting, and RW 3.0 was born.

Welcoming the nonprofit overlords

See the main article on this topic: RationalWiki Foundation

Language

It is mostly written in English though it has a small, mostly stagnant, language section, which includes Arabic, Spanish, French, Hungarian, and Russian which was forked to a new site, rationalwiki.ru. One article written entirely in lolcat was thankfully diverted to Funspace.

RationalWiki.info

(The site referred to here is now dead and cannot be referenced. Those unaware of its history should be aware that this description is exceptionally sarcastic.)

Rationalwiki.info was an impressive, frequently-updated website dedicated to "The Truth" about RationalWiki.

Originally the folks at RationalWiki thought it was a parody website, which led to multiple questions about who had created this wonderful piece of lulz. For some reason Conservapedia Sysop Karajou wanted the RationalWikians to take it down.

Its many well-designed pages had a wealth of detailed information about the formation of RationalWiki, several pages on its early days, a critique of its many goat recipes, a complete biography on every cabal member and much more information that all dedicated students of RationalWiki would have enjoyed.

It was created by a well-known ex-conservapedia sysop famous for his easy-going manner, ability to laugh at himself and charming personality.

The website was taken down sometime in mid February 2008 - so the cyberterrorists strike again!

External Links

• http://rationalwiki.info/ - Now dead
• RW.info at the Wayback Machine

Recent changes

More fun than Facebook, more relevant than Reddit and more direct than Digg, Recent changes is the ticker at the heart of RationalWiki's lively and lovely community. It's the natural home of the block log, and is the cause of many improvements to articles when someone edits a random page and everyone is reminded of its existence. It's also a measure of RW's active and inactive periods, with editing dropping to one every twenty or thirty minutes some weekday mornings (UTC), and stuff almost hurtling by in the evening. Liquid threads conversations do tend to clog it slightly though, even with the javascript tidy-upper thing.

Redlink argument

The Redlink argument is a protest that even despite an overwhelming vote an article cannot be deleted, cause stuff links to it. The links in question are often links to dusty archives from days of yore, or phantom links caused by caching in sidebar nav templates. The argument mostly started in 2011 during The Great Deconservapediafication as an excuse by rpeh and Ace to restore articles that were voted for deletion. Blue has also been known to perform this action. It should be noted that the argument was completely made up and is not mentioned in the community standards. Also, the idea of fixing the damn links themselves never seems to occur to them.

Religion

Religion is the one subject which is guaranteed to push psychological buttons on RationalWiki. Politically all active members are left of center in some way. They all espouse liberal values. Not one of then would dream of criticizing somebody because of their color or sexuality, but when it comes to religion all bets are off. Of course color and sexuality are not really choices in the way religion is, so maybe the comparison is unfair. But anyway it's religion that gets people going and this is, of course, still The Internet. And the strange thing is that everybody feels that they are getting a raw deal - non-believers think the religious are getting the time of day too often, believers and accomodationists think that loud-mouthed atheists/antitheists rule RW. Seriously. You can see it by the way they write. Both sides feel that the other is taking some sort of unfair advantage. There are, of course, two ways to view this.

• If nobody is happy then the site may have found some sort of "balance of irritation".

or

• One view really is "right" and the others should get off the Wiki.

But it's not for RationalWikiWiki to come down on one possibility or the other. It is possible that many of the members of RW do not, in fact, care very much about religion one way or the other. The majority of the religious debates historically being carried out between members of the Gang of Four and their sworn enemies the Nag of Four with occasional contributions by their acolytes. More recently, it's possible that religion has ceased to be quite the hot trigger that it used to be as even the Great Cracker Debate failed to get a high Headless Chicken Mode value. Most of the debates that get heated tend to be about atheists rather than religion, for instance, the debacle over TheAmazingAtheist's article.