User talk:Katolophyromai

What is going on? World Blogs Clogs Elections The Bar (talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic) Welcome to RationalWiki, Katolophyromai! Check out our guide for newcomers and our community standards! Tell us how you found RationalWiki here! If you are interested in contributing: Read what our articles are intended to be Check out the to-do list See our help page and Wikipedia's formatting cheatsheet If writing a new article, consider writing up a draft And most importantly: Pull up a goat and have some fun!

Why hello there! Your userpage estimation of RW seems is pretty spot on Just add to those expectations the fact that we actually have a sense of humor about it all, unlike most (though not all) of the people who attempt to troll us. They will insist otherwise, I assure you. Do not trust them. They are goats. It is known. All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 04:57, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

I actually knew about the sense of humor thing already, but I did not mention it on my userpage simply because I did not think of it at the time. I have been reading RationalWiki for a while now, even though I just started actually editing it yesterday, and I am already somewhat familiar with what makes it different from Wikipedia. For instance, I know that while Wikipedia aims to have "neutral perspective," RationalWiki is supposed to have a "snarky perspective." Katolophyromai (talk) 13:49, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Sure, though it's worth underscoring that we can be serious as well. We're not even competing with Wikipedia in any way (we just happen to share MediaWiki software as our platform). What RW really consists of is a couple of thousand "articles", which are really collaborative essays of one sort or another.

We make no secret of this, of course — exactly one hundred percent of the times people start off on a rant about how we're wrong about pet issue X (and thus about everything), it's a result of them having read "wiki" in the title and assumed that we consider ourselves an encyclopedia. We, in fact, do not.

The worst mistake I see people make is when they barge in, point to some single article, and condemn the entire site. It's generally obvious that they're completely ignorant about the nature of the site and community itself in those cases.

At RW, every article stands on its own legs, every sysop represents him/herself (and not the site), and — barring standard ratwikification — every individual article bears the imprint of the author(s) who made it come about. And that's fine.

Worth noting is that none of the above is really news, nor any blemish on the many nuggets of wisdom strewn all across the site. Our skeptical content is generally excellent, aside from the site itself being a great place to start when looking for leads on any given topic. And it's not just me who thinks that.

RW is really not a "reservoir of unlaterable, true conclusions" so much as a bravely attempted, semi–haphazard compilation of thousands of various essays (called "articles") which are being co-authored by multiple people (who come and go over time). A bit like the Bible, you could say. Uh-oh. I've said too much. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 22:56, 4 February 2017 (UTC)