Great Moments in Wikipedia Thievery, Part I

As our loyal readers well know, Dan has been offering up a series of blogs called "Great Moments in Wikipedia Vandalism" for months now. He spends hours upon hours that might be more productively spent sleeping (where do you think a Surrealist's ideas come from?), fooding, YouTubing, MySpacing, IMing, or banging pots and pans together combing through the 1,989,575 articles on Wikipedia, all for your benefit.

Now it comes to our attention that The Onion has been reading and repurposing Dan's blogs without giving appropriate credit.

Here's the Onion story:

Hard To Tell If Wikipedia Entry On Dada Has Been Vandalized Or Not

August 20, 2007 | Issue 43•34

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND—The Wikipedia entry on Dada—the World War I–era "anti-art" movement characterized by random nonsense words, bizarre photocollage, and the repurposing of pre-existing material to strange and disturbing effect—may or may not have been severely vandalized, sources said Monday.

"This is either totally messed up or completely accurate," said Reed College art history major Ted Brendon. "There's a mustache drawn on the photo of Marcel Duchamp, the font size keeps changing, and halfway through, the type starts going in a circle. Also, the majority of the actual entry is made up of Krazy Kat cartoons with abstract poetry written in the dialogue balloons."

The fact that the web page continually reverts to a "normal" state, observers say, is either evidence that ongoing vandalization is being deleted through vigilant updating, or a deliberate statement on the impermanence of superficial petit-bourgeois culture in the age of modernity.

So a pair of Surrealists run an ongoing column on Wikipedia Vandalism, and all of a sudden a humor magazine runs a piece on Wikipedia Vandalism and Dada? I don't think it takes out-of-the-ordinary mental acuity to see the connection here. Next thing you know, they're going to scoop us on finding the Greatest Pimp in the World.

Mr. Onion, I hope you're happy. I'm having to do this post because I can't get Dan to stop crying. Or, more literally, I can't get him to stop IMing me "boo-hoo. boo-hoo. boo-hoo." It's gotten to where I can't get any work done a-t'all.

We don't object, we merely ask that you cite sources. And by sources, we mean us.

Vince out.