"All your base are belong to us" was actually pretty interesting writing in the original Japanese.

Wikigroaning: A nondestructive Wikipedia game.

The premise is quite simple. First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created. Are you looking yet? Get a good, long look. Yeah.

There are a bunch of article pairs at that link -- it's pretty hilarious, actually, and I don't often say that about somethingawful.

List of (modern) proposals for succession of U.S. states

Typowiki is a wiki devoted to typography. It is, of course, in German. But the list of fonts used in corporate logos is pretty great, and comprehensible even to anglophone monoglots like me.

Litesum: instant Wikipedia summaries. It's just an ajaxy tool that retrieves the first paragraph of any article, but it's got that relaxing minimalist ethos going.

The best part is that you can type a word, then keep deleting characters from the end and see each article in turn. For example, Food → Foo → FO (disamguation page) → F (the letter).

I think j.w. missed an opportunity to counter some of Colbert's points (though the Report is treacherous waters -- it's possible Wales was desperately pulling on the rigging, trying to steer away from a mock confrontation that would launch hundreds of revert wars).

"Colbert" is, of course, a character, but sometimes the real Colbert uses him as a mouthpiece for his actual ideas -- the last time he mentioned wikipedia, he was genuinely critical of it (for, among other things, not having enough of a sense of humor).

It's been a bit morbid around here the past few posts, but still -- you should really read about the Emerald cockroach wasp, which reproduces by controlling the behavior of a cockroach.

One of George Lawrence's world renowned photographs is of the ruins of San Francisco, California after the 1906 earthquake. It is a 160 degree panorama from a kite taken 2000 feet (600 m) in the air above the San Francisco Bay that showed the entire city on a single 17 by 48 inch contact print made from a single piece of film (Click through to the picture -- it's utterly stunning and about 100 times as large as you expect.)

Also, William Huskisson was the first person in world history to be killed by a railway accident, but not the first person to be killed by a train. In 1815, sixteen people died after a train's boiler exploded.

Crush, Texas was a temporary "city" established as a one-day publicity stunt in 1896. That year, William G. Crush, general passenger agent of the Katy Railroad, conceived the idea to demonstrate a train wreck as a spectacle. No admission was charged, and train fares to the crash site were at the reduced rate of $5 from any location in Texas. As a result between 30,000 and 50,000 people showed up on September 15, 1896 making the new town of Crush, Texas the second largest city in the state.

Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. Update: fixed the link. Argh.

Cool wikipedia visualization

Gliese 581 c is a newly discovered extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. It appears to be the first extrasolar planet discovered in the hypothetical habitable zone surrounding its star, where surface temperatures might maintain liquid water and therefore be suitable for life as known on Earth.

Lolcat

The founder of Metafilter has some tips for building a healthy online community. Of relevance to Wikipedians:

When making moderation decisions, don't quote Terms of Service verbatim or legal code. Be honest and phrase things exactly like you would if you were talking to someone standing in front of you. "Hey man, we appreciate your enthusiasm, but what you're doing is uncool because..." is a lot better than "As per the user agreement, you must cease harrassment of other members per Section 10.9.a..."

Two plus two makes five

Disumbrationism was a hoax masquerading as an artistic school that was launched in 1924 by Paul Jordan-Smith, a novelist, Latin scholar, and authority on Robert Burton from Los Angeles, California.

(I'm taking a bit of a blogging hiatus -- working on some other projects, some wikipedia related, some not. Posts might be a bit less frequent for a week or two.)

Cool photo of chinese landscape -- looks almost like a vector illustration. Half of the links in the past few days are via reddit, by the way.

Wikitravel seems to be coming into its own. It just won a webby award and it's developing cool articles like Hitchhiking in Japan.