The Wacky Wacky Wacked out World of the Wikipaltz
by Rachel Lagodka

The WIKIpaltz is a communal website which hosts the work of people who believe in free speech and transparency in government. It’s a kind of Wikipedia for New Paltz and serves to house news and information about SUNY New Paltz and the New Paltz community.

It’s the website “anyone can edit,” and that’s absolutely true, but edit means something a little different than adding commas and correcting verb tenses. What it means is that anyone, with a few simple maneuvers, can change the content of the pages. However there are five of six people who check the site obsessively and may change it back. About 1/3 (and sometimes more) of the activity on the site consists of this back and forth posting and deletion, and discussions about it between what I’ll call Wikicontributors, and Wikivandals, Wikiwatchdogs, and Wikicritics. Of course, a person may play any of the four roles at any time.  

A Wikicontributor posts news items and catalogs information about campus or the community they think would be useful. The subjects range from reviews and menus of the local restaurants; pictures, bios, and reports of encounters with the campus police; the doings of the village board, the county legislature and the faculty and student governance; approximately where to get what sort of marijuana; clubs and academic programs and studies of campus history; and various contributors have posted pages about themselves, what they do on and off campus, including hobbies and other personal proclivities.   (Picture of Christian Amez, Wikicontributor and Wikiwatchdog-his user page banner)

A Wikivandal posts pornography on the front page, and writes nasty things on other people’s bio pages.  

A Wikiwatchdog checks the site every few minutes, or sets their computer to alert them when anyone changes the site, and removes or mitigates the postings of the Wikivandals. Occasionally they will plea for civility from the vandal, and occasionally it is granted. 

A Wikicritic complains about all of the above.  

There also is something called a Vandalbot. It’s a program, or a robotic vandal that a human somewhere creates and sends to attack the website. The Wikiwatchdogs banish them and I’m glad because I have no idea what they look like or even whether they galumph. 

I like the current system because it is truly democratic and optimistic. It operates on the premise that there will always be more people with common sense and a conscience editing the site than those who don’t. I objected to it for a while on the basis that it seemed to me to be a waste of time, but from a standpoint of patience and forgiveness, it makes sense. Nobody is beyond redemption. Eventually they will all learn to be nice. As to what they would do if the balance shifted and the site became more evil than good, I do not have an answer for that yet. In general they don’t really answer my questions but usually if I keep looking I find my answer three weeks later by accident.

On any given day you can reasonably expect to see something by and about Justin Holmes’ (the elected Student President of SUNY New Paltz who is currently suing them for expelling him on trumped up charges) legal situation, local news, and a calendar of events at the bottom. The picture might be of a tough blonde serving a summons to an administrator, a large picture of my dog Andrew (guilty, gulp), mumps germs, the moon, or some jeans and a pair of shoes lying in the road.  Recently there was a tribute page for Dennis O’Keefe a beloved campus and community member who died suddenly on the first day of school. Justin had just begun archiving on the WIKIpaltz the letters Dennis wrote to his mother during the takeover of the administration building in the 70s. People are still adding their stories. 

Since the Wikiwatchdogs will take down the pornography and maliciousness if it’s on the front page, you will only wake up and open the site up to a large dick in someone’s ass if the Wikivandals stayed up just a little later than the watchdogs. Almost nobody posts in the morning. 

I mainly argue with two characters, Justin Holmes, who is benevolent but uses a lot of jargon and frequently changes the topic, and Rumpus Route who is especially discourteous to liberal women and lesbians. Rumpus posts insults about their bodies their lack of mental ability and personal hygiene on their talk and bio pages. He thinks I should stay in the kitchen, but he also wants me to become an expert on foreign relations in the middle east because then I will have the same opinion as he does about Israel. Rumpus also likes to attack New Paltz Mayor Jason West who he says is mainly supported by lesbians. Justin has defended me and Jason, and Rumpus does seem to listen to him once in a while anyhow. 

At one point we got into an argument about copyright law and whether they could copy/paste articles from news sources and Justin suggested that I do that on New Paltz Nation. Bloggers and Feature writers—you should be flattered, he thought I was stealing  your work!

Then I had the blog I wrote about breasts for NewPaltzNation bite me in the ass, so to speak. Rumpus put up a bio for me and featured a quote from me saying that men still liked me even though I was flat-chested. Not exactly what anyone would want on their “bio” page. Not a big deal, you would think. However, at one point I got so sick of deleting his out-of-context breast quote, that I decided to post a picture of my husband instead of the one of me (thinking that a shot of Ryszard, shirtless, with his big hairy arms and chest might encourage Rumpus to leave me alone). Instead he started a bio page on my husband and Googled some articles about him. I think what he did was sort of creepy. He thinks what I did by deleting his inappropriate quotes and insults was censorship. He only stopped doing it when Justin called him crazy. Personally I don’t think I needed a bio page at all, Justin started it with a picture he took of me right after I’d been swimming. My hair is all wet and stringy but there’s a nice waterfall in the background. Rumpus thinks I look like a hideous sea creature. At the moment the page just has Rumpus’ information about my looks, and where I went to college and who I’m married to. Here is some of the conversation about the page which in Wikiworld is called the "talk page," and you reach it by clicking the word "discussion" at the top of the page.

The rest of it is on Rumpus’ talk page, but I can’t imagine anyone would be that interested. Rumpus will not say who he is, only that he is a member of the local Jewish community 

I don’t really have a user page yet, I have no idea what to put on it. It’s odd interacting with people who know who you are but won’t tell you who they are. Their anonymity emboldens them to be cruel and relentless in a way they would never be able to sustain or maybe even initiate in person.  

I started on a persona for my dog but I haven’t gotten around to making a user page for myself. However Andrew is going to go to his own internet world soon so I stopped adding to the page there. 

I love the neology and the communal archiving of information. Perhaps I have annoyed the Wikipeople by not always following their rules, but I have been honest and I’ve tried to be helpful. So far everything has worked out. When Rumpus relentlessly posted stuff that was malicious and incorrect on Jason West’s page and accused me of censorship each time I took it down, I asked the wikiworkers to make a template that says “truce” and agreed to accept a compromise page.  I persisted and two weeks later, Justin did it. Now the page looks OK if a bit choppy. So far this has lasted, no more visiting the computer on the way back from the bathroom in the middle of the night to “revert vandalism.” Peace is not cool—associated with hippies and liberals, Peace is lame dude... but hey—it works! 

My friends think the WIKI  is a form of mental illness, but I prefer to see it as a kind of Dungeons and Dragons except people are separated on their own terminals or hanging around with laptops half listening to the TV or the conversation.. It’s certainly not weirder than MySpace, though nobody uses it to get a date. From what they say on the site about Wikidiction I understand it is used either as a substitute for or as a temporary deterrent to having sex.  

Of course my computer skills are not as good as theirs, and I don’t know all their jargon, but I don’t really care. That just means I have more to learn from them. I participate often enough to annoy my family and my friends who absolutely do NOT want to talk about it but not often enough to keep up with all the conversations I join. I guess that’s what a blog is for. Um it’s sorta like the people who used to give slide shows about their vacations and beg you to come- no more slide shows now, just check out my blog… right? Now rather than get cracker crumbs on each others’ couches, people sit by themselves at terminals typing and looking at pictures, some of people they don’t ever know. 

It feels like I am trying to shout under water when I try to explain why I see some value in a communal website. This is true of almost everyone I know over 30. The real world is just so much more important to them. That’s good I suppose unless it dampens you to new possibilities. 

The site does appear to be dominated by the right wing ideas (especially when it comes to peace and the social safety net) and does indeed need the support of more compassionate members of the community who can stand the Wikiwars. 

If you do decide to post, please observe the rules. It's so simple. At the top of each page there are four little boxes:"article"; "discussion"; "edit" ;"history." If you want to change the page hit "edit," type what you want to add, scroll down to the bottom, hit "preview" to see what it will look like, and then hit "save and your change will go down in "history."  When you are editing there is a little box at the bottom of the page called "summary"  Please take the extra two seconds to write WHY you made your edit before you hit save. If you forget, go back to edit the page again but only write in the summary box and hit save.  To see what changes have been made to that page hit 'history" at the top of the page. Go to the main page and hit "recent changes" on the left sidebar to see what changes have been made to the site.

If you enjoy logic you will not be totally disappointed. There is some order in the chaos, and some benevolence.  

So here, if you haven’t already stopped reading  and you haven’t had enough WIKI, I shall leave you a protracted argument on the talk page for a wikiarticle about Jason West's request for full time pay. It became a debate between County Legislator Hector Rodriguez and Jason West, and then Nora, Jason’s assistant answered Hector.  It is actually quite interesting, and a political forum that did not exist before this WIKIpaltz. The commentary includes invective against West, a pastime that's just so totally in among the disgruntled in New Paltz. 

Go Back to Blogs.