@Strange_One:
I remember reading that the Puffing Tom was an anachronism and having this awful "…what the fuck, wikipedia!?" moment and realizing how stupid some people are.
Wow, I wonder what kind of imbecile would put that up on Wikipedia. :whistling:
@Ubiq:
Again, I seriously doubt that they're new so much as they've just begun spreading out from their traditional haunts. Their increased presence might be due to people who traditionally maintained certain articles just giving up and moving on to leave the field to these people.
I think there's more of them. The Wikipedia hierarchy goes like this:
1. Anonymous
2. Registered
3. Admins
To be an admin, one has to suck a lot of male genitalia, since election to the admin position (which effectively allows people to do whatever they want, including ban anyone or give "expert" opinions on stuff they might have no experience with) is by consensus, so a lot of friends help.
A large number of the admins that are at the core of this problem have registered in 2005, roughly when I started. But, instead of being Anonymous and making casual edits, they've engaged in long-winded, boring discussions on the most idiotic of stuff while accumulating a huge entourage of loyal yes-men who basically act as the numerical muscle to allow these people to do whatever they want.
In 2004, there were few admins since the community was a lot smaller as people needed serious brainpower to make a name for themselves (since "recreation" articles were looked frownly upon, it was almost impossible to become an admin by editing them even ten thousand times).
Remember Griffin? What Wikipedia has effectively done is given fourteen year old morons armed weaponry and with it they're making noisy, unwanted drama. The other admins are commited to Wikipedia ideals and so they don't fudge with these guys, and if anyone objects they merely ban the offenders or cite obscure Wikipedia rules (that rarely apply) to intimidate people.
It's also come to my attention that the Wikipedia mess has attracted SomethingAwful's ire as well, although indepdently from Yotsuba's incident. Apparently, the jackarse at the centre of the lolicon issue (who has a name simmilar to "Herodotus") pulled out some horrible logic in a KND article and Lowtax bashed him, and now another article's been released.
@Ubiq:
On the whole, I might despise these people under normal circumstances, but if the portions of the discussion that I can bring myself to read are any indication the copyright hawks and sundry others are basically arrayed against people who have to jump through linguistic hoops to define themselves as something other than pedophiles. If so, my sympathies are entirely with the former as the whole Lolicon phenomenon is rather creepy.
Don't be mislead by the overly passionate Anonymous, they're saying stuff they don't really understand or mean because they can't think clearly when faced with idiocy on the magnitude of the Wikipidiot elite. Any "pedophile" self-justification should be ignored; the 4channers acknowledge they're pedos and normally don't care what others think, it's just that their foundation is being called into quetion because of their intent, and they're taking it badly.
The issue is, there's an ugly-arse image for the lolicon article done by a deviantart friend of one of the admins who has "proclaimed" the topic her territory. The image is ugly on purpose to try and depict "lolicon" as negatively as possible, since pedophillia is wrong.
At least according to that admin. Frankly, I don't think any opinion or "club connections" like that should be used.
So what does Anonymous do? He suggests using the Wikipi-tan image posted on the jp.wikipedia website (on the same page), who is not only "moe" but a LOLI as well, because 1) it doesn't push some moral agenda, and 2) it was actually done by a Japanese person and not some girly weeaboo.
The "Project Anime" folks are in an uproar since, holy heck, WIKIPI-TAN IS AN ICON OF OUR STRUGGLE YO. WE CAN'T PUT HER IN AN ARTICLE ABOUT LOLIS SINCE THAT MAKES US LOOK LIKE PEDOS AND CLEARLY EVEN THOUGH WE MASTURBATE TO WIKIPI-TAN WE ARE NOT PEDOPHILES.
And, low and behold, drama.