Wikiffiti -- stickers that read [citation needed]

Matt says: "I recently started a culture jamming (Operation Mindfuck for Discordians) campaign that involves recontextualizing ads and signs -- or anything that makes a dubious claim -- using stickers with the [citation needed] tag found in Wikipedia articles. This blog post describes the project and has the first few pictures."

One of my favorite quirks about [Wikipedia] are the little [citation needed] tags that users can place in an article, indicating that a dubious claim needs a reference. One day an idea struck – what statements are more dubious or outright ridiculous than those in advertisements? Thus, an OM project was born. I had 250 8×2 inch stickers printed, which I handed out to friends, who circulated them further. In true wiki fashion, the final placement of the stickers is a collaborative effort, now distributed and anonymous. If anyone sees one somewhere, please make a photo! I’ve been tagging my photoset on Flickr with citationneeded and wikiffiti.

Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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mghuntb5

I immediately recognized the Navarro sign. Too bad the sticker isn’t bigger so it can be read from a moving car. You’re making Tempe a better place to live. [citation needed].
arjunatwombly

@CERTRON that’s exactly what i thought, too! as soon as i saw it i went trawling through the xkcd archives for it… wish i’d looked at the comments here before waisting half an hour…
Tao

The XKCD strip was the first thing I thought of as well. I thought about doing something similar to this, but I had a feeling I’d be ripping off XKCD, rather than referencing it.
But well done with the stickers, love ‘em.
certron

#9, Arjunatwombly: it’s OK, I spent a few minutes trying to find the page before giving up on the search engine and hitting Random a few times and then going to Previous. Only after I located the strip (was it really time wasted?) did I think to check the comments on the original post.
Halloween Jack

I’ve always thought that the classic poo-stall poetry that begins with “Here I sit, broken-hearted…” lacked for proper references. Ditto for the information about the man from Nantucket.
OM

…Bah, that [citation needed] tag is one of the most abused tags on any Wiki. I’ve seen articles practically vandalized beause some punk slapped those tags on every other sentence, especially for facts that are common knowledge and citing source is ridiculous!
Zum Zamim

I would stick on of these on just about every page of the christian bible.
ariadneallan

I hope you all know where such obnoxious signage started. Robert Anton Wilson was one unique dude. kallisti.
Maurik

That guy is my hero.

I’m going to start doing that soon!
certron

Of course, the first comment on that post is a link to http://xkcd.com/285/ which is the first thing I thought of when I saw this.

The only answer? XKCD controls the universe.
kpkpkp

I much prefer my return-address label (Vista print is great) BULLSHIT stickers. Black CAPS on red background.
franko

wow, do i love this. i want some immediately!
mrfitz

yeah, but at what point does something not need to be cited any longer?
Axx

@MRFRITZ I think for bathroom graffiti 120 citations retires the need to cite further, for advertisments in the subway I think the figure is closer to 300.
pepsi_max2k

oh i’ve been waiting sooo long for someone to constructively take the total piss out of the [citation needed] stuff. i heart this man.