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Via Andrew Lih (Colbert Spams Wikipedia) and Slashdot (Stephen Colbert Wikipedia Prank Backfires), I watched the famous/notorious/interesting prank video clip on Youtube.com: “wikiality”.

It is a prank to exploit the conservative news program anchor character, Stephen Colbert, in the selection of his favorite “non-fact” “anti-intellecual” attitude / POV, the prank makes fun of wikipedia. Using a fake scenario of “submitting entries in realtime”, Stephen Colbert typing his notebook and teaching everyone in front of the television: everyone can edit an article on wikipedia. Democracy media.

I laughed. And also I think it IS a culture-jamming event on wikipedia. Just like people sabortage the news clips, hack billboards, weaving fake news on mainstream media channels, this time, a main steam comedian jamming the Internet medium. Wales comments about the traffic data comparing wikipedia and CNN website that “Wikipedia is mainstream already”. So this is a joke right exploiting the (social?) “security leaks” in the middle of wikipedia.

Let’s roll back to a recently well-written article about wikipedia. New Yorker “Fact”: “Know It All — Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?” by Stacy Schiff, “one of the best article about wikipedia” mentioned in Andrew Lih’s blog, showed fact-based empathy and sincere critics toward wikipedia in the end of July. It distinguishes the global new challenge of vulenteer knowledge community and fandome.

Stacy had interviewed him with certain depth that light up certain moments he start writing again:

And Wales’ fond of citing: Charles Van Doren. Via comparing his Encyclopedia of Britanica to Wikipedia, Wales found his real radical power.

Stacy analysis the multitude: “wikipedian”.

Wikipedians are not neutral in essence, they are factors too that influence the content. And I think it’s here of the critics that echos with the Colbert’s satire, culture-jamming game.

That’s why Colbert introduce the “word”, “wikiality”. Comparing to “reality”, “wikiality” relied on an optimistic imagination of collective wisdom. As Stacy mentioned, ESR, the open source guru that inspired Wales, “…believes that the open-source model is simply inapplicable to an encyclopedia.”

I think this event is an interesting leak to let us dive deep into the underworld of culture mediascape. The grown up wikipedia, and wikipedians, are facing new challenges to weave their world, and closely with reality bytes/reality that bites.