Cool Freaks’ Wikipedia Club and Oxford University, a comparison

Two things dear to our hearts


Rory Cox looks to Wikipedia for some Oxonian inspiration

In the final throes of last term I joined the Cool Freaks’ Wikipedia Club on Facebook.

It was a dream come true – the group is a large crowd of like minded individuals that mine Wikipedia for gems and present them, neatly condensed, right on my newsfeed.

The artist at work

Following this discovery, the “real world” of selfies and whatever attempts at social entrepreneurship were flavour of the month were wiped away and replaced with with the sumptuous intellectual stimulation of articles like these:

List of Sexually Active Popes

Self Awareness

Timeline of the far future

Soylent (drink)

Osama bin Laden (elephant)

I felt pretty pleased with myself and pointed it out to one or two of my most Wikipedian friends.

Trinity was truly the golden age of that group. I would discuss it at dinner parties to the awe of my peers and chuckle each morning at the new and interesting article that had been pushed to the top of my daily infinite scroll.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Wolf_Moon

Then the law of exponential growth took hold. And as is always the way tumult and anger besmirched the once serene and simple land.

Albeit damaged by rapid expansion and public acclaim, the group remains not completely devoid of merit, as does Oxford University – another collective founded on the pure idea of the sharing of knowledge and collaboration among like-minded people.

However both Oxford and CFWC struggle to fit into our progressive world and its modern expectations.

The two are of similar size. CFWC weighs in around 29,000 members and Oxford is only slightly behind this with about 22,000. You only need to spend a few weeks as a member of either to conclude that both contain their share of idiots. Then again there are a few inspired geniuses in there as well – usually these are more likely to keep themselves to themselves.

A major difference between the two institutions lies in their ages. The exact date of establishment of both is disputed. Oxford is probably some 918 years old and CFWC might be 2.

It speaks to the power of the internet that it has grown to nearly 30,000 strong in such a short time.

Both groups have their share of shit banter. On CFWC this manifests as an overplayed but never really funny reference to toast sandwiches and calling people or things “cool and freaky” – which I’m certain is not the point of the name.

At Oxford we see this mirrored by lamentations about 5th week blues, shit inside jokes based on the assumption ‘this would only happen in Oxford’ and “Essay Crises”.

Actually quite funny on occasions

 It’s admittedly slightly harder to become a member of Oxford but it is far easier to be banished from CFWC. Bands of extremist ideologues patrol comment threads wielding “The banhammer” and waiting for someone to slip up and forget to post a trigger warning. Those who do are promptly hung drawn and quartered. 

Our own chief and editor at the Tab was banned during a comment skirmish in which he only posted one photoshopped picture of Kim Jong-un.

Not the offending image

When he realised he would no longer have the constant stream of trivia it was the only time I have seen him show real sadness.

“It wasn’t even photoshop, I used paint” he said. 

Oxford has a similar phenomenon where you might have your name dragged through the mud for months or be threatened with jail time if you offend the wrong faction.

meta

Perhaps this is simply a result of large groups of people becoming enlightened though at least it isn’t quite so authoritarian as the Cool Freaks’ with their Reinstatement Group.

Having said that we are yet to see what dramas grace Oxford this year.

Nevertheless these are still two fine institutions that celebrate knowledge and humanity’s grasp of it.

I just wonder whether the true founders, be they long since dead or banished from the admin roles, approve of what their creations have become.