THANK YOU, AND GOODBYE!
Wikitruth thanks you for your years of support!

From Wikitruth

[edit] THANK YOU, GOODBYE, THANKS FOR THE WISHES AND DREAMS

Yes, that's right, the race has run. And we won it. Wikitruth hereby announces that we're finished with the day to day, stepping down from our telescopes and binoculars on Wikitruth Tower, and returning to our regular lives, devoid of Wiki-markup language and tracking the latest scandals and hilarities for everyone's favorite mind game.

We're going to keep the site up, tune up some of the entries, and maintain those top-quality pages and graphs that have brought us so much attention over the years. But we're getting out of the business of tracking what's coming down the road, ferreting out the background secrets, determining what is laughable and what is pathetic. Others spend much more time than we do and do it, if not with the same aplomb and class, at least with a grinding efficiency necessary for their audience. Free at last, Free at last!

What finally told us our job was done was what will be known as the Flagged Revisions Debate, where a discussion was held on Wikipedia whether to allow certain entries to not be instantaneously edited and put up for the world, but held under scrutiny until an administrator or other wonk approved and pushed through the changes.

This debate was universally awesome because of three main points:

• The "community" was terribly confused, hurt and annoyed by the whole discussion. While some thought flagged revisions were the worst idea since the ShakeItBaby(tm) Infant Blender, others thought this was the thing that could truly save Wikipedia from further downward spiral. Oh, give these people credit: they can drive a discussion into the goddamned ground. Hundreds of weigh-ins later, no discussions were final.
• But then, someone decided to go ahead and assume that Ted Kennedy, since he'd had a seizure, was dead, and made him dead on the Wikipedia entry for Ted Kennedy. This got the attention of the press, and that got the attention of King Jimbo Himself. His solution? Completely ignore the discussion of whether to implement Flagged Revisions and do it anyway. Ah, that Jimbo, showing his true colors after so many years of polishing his I'm-just-here-to-save-the-world perfection. And then he got on a plane and said it could be discussed later. Ho, ho!
• Seeing this was completely insane, his decision (normally final) was reversed. Reversed! Who could ask for more! The emperor deposed, the final strike against the idiot God-King of all knowledge; he was no longer the last word on anything. Everything is up for grabs. And it will be.

Friends, what else is there left to do for a Wikitruth? What else can we point out that tops this?

There comes a time when you have to realize that you were a radical procedure, a desperate move to help bring healing and improvement about where things looked dark and doomed. Wikitruth spoke when Wikipedia could do no wrong, when they laughed off attempts to stop libel and harassment with burbling about "getting it". They laughed and sang and danced about how it would be a new world, a new place where child pornography and questionable content and from-nowhere declarations would have a home, forever.

Now we're just hearing the same old footsteps behind us, the wave of people running in the race we've always raced, acting like these are all new revelations, instead of the latest round of what we've always said.

Folks, we did it. We won. Nobody seriously looks at Wikipedia like it's the place to go for excellent information, or the place where, ultimately, the best will rise to the top. It's a joke, a web forum with formatting, a thug-and-crowd-edited blog with lots of relinking. Sometimes it gets it right. Sometimes it gets it wrong. It's like everything else.

We've been so tired, running this race. And when the ribbon went across our chests, we heaved a sign of relief.

We blink our eyes in the sun.

We've won.

Thanks to everyone for following us all these years. Wikitruth has been a production of Wikitruthia, a Division of David Gerard, Inc. We appreciate the work of many to slip us facts, give us evidence, forward us logs and drop some bombshells in our mailbox. You did well and good, our spies on the wire. You are to be commended.

Thanks, too, for all the kind fanmail and the hilarious demands to be able to edit our site, like it's a right. Thanks so much for the angry mails telling us we're wrong by people who then quit Wikipedia. Thanks to the Friends of Wikitruth, in all their guises and forms. Thanks, thanks, thanks.

And Goodbye.