Every once in a while I think of a word, or see it printed somewhere, and I wonder, “what does Wikipedia have on this word?” And “just how messed up is their entry on it?” Today’s word was “Gruff,” and sure enough, there was once a page on it, but it’s now a redirect to an article about characters in the Nintendo game “Animal Crossing.” Prior to its becoming a redirect, the Gruff article read sort of like this:

Gruff the goat is an anthropomorphic goat in Animal Crossing. He is quite grumpy and always talks in a deep grumbling voice. His catch phrase is “Bleh eh eh!” which is a possible reference to a goat. Gruff prefers to be arrogant and prefers to be left alone and sometimes distances himself from the other animals of the group. He will participate in the events in town… Read the rest of this entry »

The internet has always been a favorite place for those who enjoy the odd bit of irrational hyperbole now and again, along with the occasional complete breakdown of logic, and of course the ever-popular just-plain-wierd utterance. (Disclamer: The Wikipedia Review isn’t immune to this, though there’s nowhere near as much of it here as we’ve been accused of having - at least in some quarters.)

Hardcore users and administrators on the English Wikipedia have a variant of the English language all their own, full of acronyms and jargon, as well as some rather creative redefinitions of popular terminology. Read the rest of this entry »

Casual readers of The Wikipedia Review, in combing through its thousands of topics, are often surprised to find relatively little material about what many reporters, bloggers, and other commentators usually perceive to be Wikipedia’s biggest problem: namely, the many inaccuracies, and occasionally outright falsehoods, that are sometimes found in various Wikipedia articles.

Read the rest of this entry »