Wikipedia:Mention of Wikipedia in articles

The wiki process, software, and outputs (including the wikipedia and wiktionary) are the subject of a great deal of study, attention, and loyalty by a larger and larger group of people every day. Some of them comment on it, leading to the frequent mention of wiki in articles. Sometimes these comments are especially applicable to Wikipedia, sometimes not. We should not confuse the wiki process and software with any specific project using them, i.e. Wikipedia is not wiki[?].

If you make such a mention of Wikipedia, the odds that someone who sees Wikipedia in a different way will edit your article is greater all the time. Here are some important guidelines to keep in mind:

First, both wiki and Wikipedia can be examples of both 'good' and 'bad' things. While it is true that ideally Wikipedia is based on w:consensus decision making, from time to time it also denigrates into a w:flame war or w:cluster fuck. Articles on all three concepts would be well within their rights to cite either Wikipedia or the wiki process as an example.

We try to be brutally honest here, even at the risk of offending someone. If someone removed, for instance, a link in an article explaining "cluster fuck" and citing wikipedia as actually 'being' one, it is especially important to put it back, see Wikipedia:profanity and continue to assert that wikipedia has these undesirable characteristics. Else wikipedia can never improve, denial spreads, and ideology (in this case of wikipedia promoters) is allowed to triumph over neutrality. What Wikipedia is not is as much ideology as we need.

The consensus has been not to treat Wikipedia as special or honored, in texts published in Wikipedia; Wikipedia has no credibility if it cannot discuss itself with the same even-handedness as it discusses everything else. It is extremely important for newcomers to understand this, and not to accept the groupthink of the 'community' without a fight. They are the most likely to see undesirable or unpleasant aspects of Wikipedia. Thus we must listen.

Second, wiki changes, and despite the desire to change it in certain ways, it is changing in its own way. Keeping articles that mention the wikipedia up to date is especially important. As it grows, it is likely to provide examples of collaboration[?], perhaps constitutional government[?], and even collective intelligence. It is also certain to provide examples of groupthink, flame war, and the aforementioned cluster fuck. If something happens in the editing process that you think is an example of something, well, you are better off describing it as such, and forcing others to agree or edit until you come to a consensus - even/especially on the controversial topics.

Remember: if wikipedia is not honest about what itself 'is' at any given moment, then it cannot be trusted to be honest about what anything else is. Wikipedia is not a carceral state casting light on everything outside itself. We want scrutiny on Wikipedia:what it thinks it is, Wikipedia:what it claims to be, Wikipedia:itself as a process and product, and everything else critical to its identity. It is supposed to be a model of transparency and of consensus. If not us, who? If not now, when?

If Wikipedia is not honest about itself, then, your first duty as a supporter is to state that fact clearly, where it can be read and understood as some kind of example of stating things clearly, even if it's socially difficult.

Wikipedia:self-claims lists all the noteworthy articles and contexts in which the project itself has been defined and discussed, used as an example, slandered, libelled, abused and etc. - consider carefully what it's actually doing, and what purpose mention of Wikipedia in articles is serving.

Influencing what Wikipedia thinks it is by adding references to Wikipedia to Wikipedia articles, raises issues of neutrality which other things do not:

1. Is the reference pro-Wikipedia? It may not be neutral, and Wikipedians may have a systemic bias.
2. Is the reference the result of Wikipedia-obsession? Say, by a Wikipediholic? Excessive mentions of Wikipedia may give an over-inflated mention of Wikipedia's importance - again, not neutral, and tending to generate massive lists of Wikipedia:self-claims that the meta:board may have to go through, to figure out what the real directon and needs of the project are.
3. are you confusing mention of wiki in articles, that is, wiki as a process and set of related tools, with mention of Wikipedia itself?
4. are you confusing what Wikipedia claims to be, a neutral report of what NPOV articles say, with what Wikipedia thinks it is, a more active and less neutral formation of self-image and self-identity by the participants?
5. are you assuming that meta:What Wikipedia thinks it is is necessarily equivalent to what Wikipedia claims to be in any given language, e.g. EN?

If we can avoid at least these major mistakes, and look critically at ourselves, this will be a much better project, and it will be very hard to make it fail, or hijack it, for any purpose other than those we conciously adopt ourselves.