User:Bobamnertiopsis/Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club

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Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club
Type of site
Facebook group
URLfacebook.com/groups/coolfreakswikipediaclub
CommercialNo
Users35,000+
Launched24 September 2013; 10 years ago (2013-09-24)

Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club (CFWC[1]) is a Facebook group where members can share and discuss interesting Wikipedia articles. It was created on 24 September 2013.[2] The group has over 35,000 members.[3]

Format[edit]

The toast sandwich Wikipedia article is commonly posted by group members.[4][5]

The content of Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club is user-submitted. Members of the group create posts linking to interesting, strange, and topical Wikipedia articles through the Facebook platform. Posts may include selected quotations from the text of the article, commentary, and previews of image thumbnails. Lengthy discussion threads often follow each posting through Facebook's comment feature.[2] Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club and other Cool Freaks groups are considered to be a part of the subset of Internet meme groups known as Weird Facebook, along with other groups such as Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash and Post Aesthetics.[6][7] Weird Facebook groups are also associated with far-left politics.[8]

Wikipedia pages shared by users have included articles such as toast sandwich, Osama bin Laden (elephant) and Three Wolf Moon.[5] Members also post lists, such as the list of sexually active popes and list of lists of lists.[9][4] These are often found by users who are in what essayist and Wikipedian Dorothy Howard calls "Wikipedia holes": going from one article to another by clicking the interwiki links found inside an article.[3]

Occasionally, Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club posts will document vandalism or controversies on Wikipedia. For example, In August 2015, an edit war was sparked on Wikipedia over which notable Millenials would be listed on the article about the generation. A screenshot of one iteration of the list was posted to the Facebook group, where members debated their own ideas about notable members of the Millenial generation.[10]

Moderation[edit]

The group's moderators and set of rules require trigger warnings for articles dealing with sensitive subjects, such as suicide, rape, gore, and animal abuse.[2][11] Banned topics include genocide and serial killers.[12] Deriding or knowingly ignoring the trigger warning system is also forbidden.[5][11] Former group moderator Emmett Mirza has stated that Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club's sensitivity to triggering content is due to the fact that many administrators belong to marginalized groups.[2] A separate Facebook group, "Banned Members Reinstatement Program", is used to help reinstate banned members who request to return following actions that have violated the rules.[4]

In an essay written for Rhizome, Dorothy Howard said that what one moderator called rules that "cater to the disenfranchised" was an "innovation" for a Facebook group, because it contributes to the sense of community in the group. Howard concludes that "solidarity-building and collective self-governance" are as important to the Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club members as the content that is shared on the page.[3] Sally Marquez cites the group as an example of how groups can take advantage of mediated communication, because of the ability to structure the community through the use of trigger warnings and banning users.[13] The "zero-tolerance" policy towards perceived hateful content also sets Cool Freaks' Wikpipedia Club and other Weird Facebook communities apart from communities on websites like Reddit and Twitter, whose "commitment to free speech", Hudson Hongo writes, may be viewed as "tolerating harassment".[7]

Reception[edit]

In her article "'Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club' Is the Only Facebook Group You Need", Sage Lazarro of The New York Observer's technology news website Betabeat compared the group to /r/Wikipedia, "except better, for it sprinkles actual information in between vacation photos and #blessed statuses, making your newsfeed somewhat worth looking at."[2] Reyhan Harmanci of Fast Company also praised the site, calling it "a lightly moderated Facebook group where people post links to weird Wikipedia articles. It is fantastic dinner party material."[14] Max Hall of the University of Sydney's student newspaper Honi Soit reviewed the Facebook group favorably, saying "it will swamp your news feed with links to Wikipedia's greatest hits and the guest commentary of weirdly invested group members."[9] Gabe Bergado of Mic called Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club "a public Facebook group devoted to all the oddest corners of the online collaborative encyclopedia."[12] Nathan Stewart of public research and higher education institution Sciences Po in Paris, France called it "[the] epitome of Facebook Groups".[15] Paste named the group's Twitter account the 14th-best of 2014.[16]

Tubefilter's Sam Gutelle compared it to the web series That Wikipedia List.[17]

Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club has received criticism for its purportedly strict moderation policies. Rory Cox of The Tab called the group's moderators "bands of extremist ideologues [who] patrol comment threads wielding 'the banhammer'."[4] Vice's River Donaghey was also critical of the group's moderation, which he described as a "shitshow of esoterica, political correctness, and trigger warnings". He ultimately concluding that the trigger warnings created a sense of "fascist hypersensitivity."[5]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Voyage LA staff (22 January 2018). "Meet B. Bird Person of CFWC". Voyage LA. voyagela.com. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d e Lazarro, Sage (4 September 2014). "'Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club' Is the Only Facebook Group You Need". BetaBeat. The New York Observer. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
  3. ^ a b c Howard, Dorothy (22 July 2015). "Feed my Feed: Radical publishing in Facebook Groups". Rhizome. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d Cox, Rory (17 November 2014). "Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club and Oxford University, a comparison". The Tab. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  5. ^ a b c d Donaghey, River (7 November 2014). "Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club Is a Shitshow of Esoterica, Political Correctness, and Trigger Warnings". Vice. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  6. ^ McBride, Jameson Randall (11 July 2017). "Post Aesthetics and the memetic Marxists". The Awl. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
  7. ^ a b Hongo, Hudson (25 February 2016). "The Rise of Weird Facebook: How the World's Biggest Social Network Became Cool Again (and Why It Matters)". New York. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
  8. ^ Kleinman, Alexis (9 September 2017). "'Weird Facebook' and 'Leftbook,' explained: How absurd meme groups could change Facebook for good". Mic. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
  9. ^ a b Hall, Max (23 September 2014). "The sick sad world of Generic Office Roleplay". Honi Soit. Retrieved 24 September 2014.
  10. ^ Lazarro, Sage (11 August 2015). "Wikipedians in an Editing War Over Justin Bieber Being Called a 'Notable Millennial'". The New York Observer. Retrieved 28 August 2015.
  11. ^ a b Tran, Anthony (20 August 2015). "#tbt lonelygirl: confessing online". Walker Art Center. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
  12. ^ a b Bergado, Gabe (9 December 2014). "There's an Entire Internet Community Dedicated to Exploring the Wild Depths of Wikipedia". Mic. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
  13. ^ Marquez, Sally (13 January 2015). Miriam Posner (ed.). "Week Two: Communication in Digital Spaces". Retrieved 28 August 2015.
  14. ^ Harmanci, Reyhan (15 August 2014). "The Recommender: Reyhan Harmanci, Who Hallucinated At Dollywood". Fast Company. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
  15. ^ Stewart, Nathan (11 March 2015). "Facebook Groups Are Cool". Sciences Po. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
  16. ^ Hongo, Hudson (15 December 2014). "The 75 Best Twitter Accounts of 2014". Paste. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
  17. ^ Gutelle, Sam (8 April 2016). "Indie Spotlight: 'That Wikipedia List' Provides A Series Of Curiosities". Tubefilter. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
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External links[edit]

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Category:Critics of Wikipedia Category:Facebook groups Category:History of Wikipedia Category:Internet forums Category:Internet properties established in 2013 Category:Social networking services Category:Wikipedia culture

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