Tom Tomorrow "encouraging" BLP editing

[Strelnikov]

I just found this one; in June Tom Tomorrow (political cartoonist, draws/writes This Modern World) was told by his readers that his BLP hadn't been updated since 2009 (I wonder why that is?) and he began encouraging his fans to improve it. Here is what it looked like before the call went out; it was one of those articles that was being gnomed because nobody remaining in WikiLand gives a damn about Dan Perkins (Tomorrow's real name). The sort of people interested in political cartoons vanished after the Essjay fiasco, because it's too "adult, newspaper reading" for the hardest of hard-core active Wikigeeks remaining (even though Perkins was/is mostly published in alternative press in the real world). The revision history; the big contributors were BrillLyle and Klaun.

I couldn't stick this in Eric's "Paid Editing" thread, because no money was paid, but it's just odd to see a creator ask his fans to do Wikipedia drek work....unless you miss the last update line:

.....many thanks to people who have helped update the page — looks like many (but not all) of these changes are starting to show up. Given that the Wikipedia entry is one of the first things that shows up in a Google search, it’s nice to have remotely close to accurate there.

He knows.

[The End]

Later on, I suspect Tom Tomorrow's "Skeletor" will drop in with his own two cents:



Source: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/16

This is why we can't have nice things on Wikipedia.

[ericbarbour]

Dammit! Now you've reminded me of a webcomic. Created early in Wikimedia history and was basically bald-faced propaganda for the Jimbo Way. It was utterly obscure, ran for only a few months, and quickly forgotten. Now I can't remember what it was called. arrg.

[ericbarbour]

Ah hah, I found it:

Between December 2006 and June 2008, Tampa Bay Tribune cartoonist Greg Williams drew a "Wiki-World" comic item on a semi-weekly basis. It was approved by the WMF without community input, and was bland, completely positive and non-satirical about Wikipedia. Each panel contained a chunk of a different Wikipedia article of the period, with a cartoon illustration of the subject(s).

The remaining comics, on Commons -- 55 of them survived.

From this WO thread:

"A little more about those cartoons..."
"What you don't realize is that Greg Williams talked about this concept with the WMF office in St. Petersburg, and as was usually their custom, they implemented and approved of the whole thing without any community discussion beforehand, and without any concern that Williams would get all kinds of free publicity for himself and the Tampa Tribune, even while he co-opted the Wikipedia logo!"
"Believe it or not, the comic images themselves used to be dumped RIGHT INTO the article space! It seems that the way the WMF and Wikipedia cronies handled the severe objections to this entirely non-encyclopedic, career-serving mess, was to "compromise" and only provide a link to the cartoons in article space, rather than the cartoon itself."

[The End]

Ah hah, I found it:

Between December 2006 and June 2008, Tampa Bay Tribune cartoonist Greg Williams drew a "Wiki-World" comic item on a semi-weekly basis. It was approved by the WMF without community input, and was bland, completely positive and non-satirical about Wikipedia. Each panel contained a chunk of a different Wikipedia article of the period, with a cartoon illustration of the subject(s).

The remaining comics, on Commons -- 55 of them survived.

From this WO thread:

"A little more about those cartoons..."
"What you don't realize is that Greg Williams talked about this concept with the WMF office in St. Petersburg, and as was usually their custom, they implemented and approved of the whole thing without any community discussion beforehand, and without any concern that Williams would get all kinds of free publicity for himself and the Tampa Tribune, even while he co-opted the Wikipedia logo!"
"Believe it or not, the comic images themselves used to be dumped RIGHT INTO the article space! It seems that the way the WMF and Wikipedia cronies handled the severe objections to this entirely non-encyclopedic, career-serving mess, was to "compromise" and only provide a link to the cartoons in article space, rather than the cartoon itself."

I remember that when it came out, but I didn't find it funny or amusing. Good artwork, though. Was there a dispute between the cartoonist and the community? I thought his departure was rather abrupt.

[ericbarbour]

Was there a dispute between the cartoonist and the community? I thought his departure was rather abrupt.

Supposedly there was some kind of squabble. You won't find any clear trace of it on Wikimedia servers today--I've tried.

It had a Wikiproject, which is no help at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _WikiWorld

Greg had a WP account he used to post the cartoon panels--judging from that, he asked them to put the cartoons on the WP front page or in the articles themselves, and as usual the smug little autists refused. They want TOTAL CONTROL over every shred of it. Ceding even tiny bits of article space to a cartoonist is just not conceivable, even though he free-licensed the panels as required. I'll bet this was fought over on IRC and no traces remain today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... g_Williams