... Whales. There's nothing on Troll Metal (rock music about goblins that eat Christians), autofellatio [a form of masturbation that can be traced to the Egyptian creation myth) or Dr. Bombay (the physician warlock on Bewitched).
"No, you can only find those entries in one encyclopaedia: The Wikipedia, the Encyclopaedia that was launched in 2001 and has become biggest, most wide-ranging, most untamed reference work in history."
According to the Wikipedia page for Jacobs' story, the article was edited 224 times in the first 24 hours after Jacobs posted it, and another 149 times in the next 24 hours.
The final draft, which was locked on 23 September to protect it from further edits, reflects the efforts of the many users who worked on it.
"What is the legal status of dwarf tossing?" the locked version begins. "Did people really worship Jesus Christ's foreskin as a relic? Where was crushing by elephant used as an execution method? And who is the mysterious galactic ruler Xenu at the heart of Scientology?
"You won't find the answers in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Only one place contains them all: Wikipedia. The free online encyclopedia has become the largest, most wide-ranging and most untamed reference work in history."
Along the way, the Wikipedia community worked under a few guidelines from Jacobs: "Use a punchy writing style — we're writing an article for Esquire; don't write like an encyclopaedia — this is a feature magazine article; keep the word count close to the original — wiki isn't paper, but this article will be printed on paper."
And the users responded. According to the site, the original article was 709 words with 14 paragraphs, while the final edit was indeed punchier and included 771 words and 15 paragraphs.
Andy Baio, who posted a link to the Esquire experiment on Waxy.org: Links suggested the project provides a particularly apt example of how Wikipedians handle articles.
"I think it's great," Baio said. "Look at the activity. Every...
