wiki crack

English

Etymology

From wiki +‎ crack (cocaine).

Noun

wiki crack (uncountable)

1. (Wikimedia jargon, humorous) A notional drug, likened to crack cocaine, supposed to cause individuals to become addicted to editing Wikipedia.
   • 2006, Daniel H. Pink, “The Book Ends Here”, in The Best of Technology Writing 2006, Ann Arbor, M.I.: University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, page 109:

     Then one night he corrected an error in an article about Jewish holidays. You can do that?! It was his first inhalation of Wiki crack. He became one of Wikipedia's earliest registered users and wrote his first article—on Muckleshoot, a Washington State Indian tribe. Since then, he has made more than 16,000 contributions.

   • 2006 August 9, Gary Younge, “Geek nation”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian‎^[1], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-04-17:

     "You can't talk about it in terms of left and right," explains Corr. "But the whole way it is set up is about inclusivity, community and equality rather than competition and individualism." For the most part, people at the conference didn't talk about it in these terms at all. When the wiki-crack takes over, all you are interested in is your next hit.

   • 2007 September 30, Brianna Laugher, “[Wiki World] a metric for community”, in Google Groups‎^[2] (Wiki World), archived from the original on 2023-06-11:

     Sites like Wikipedia are more in the middle, perhaps. Maybe people are drawn in by one initial topic and discover wikicrack and turn to a wider range of articles. (I know I have devoted a lot of time to topics I don't actually care about simply because I was wikiaddicted.)

   • 2009, Andrew Lih, The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia, New York, N.Y.: Hyperion, →ISBN, page 101:

     Finishing the 3,000 entries kicked off something in Ramsey's pleasure center. He had his first whiff of "wiki-crack," the irreverent jargon Wikipedians have used to describe their addiction. So he set out on the next task—adding 33,832 city articles to Wikipedia.

   • [2014 October 19, Walter Isaacson, “You Can Look It Up: The Wikipedia Story”, in The Daily Beast‎^[3], archived from the original on 2022-10-14:

     There is something fundamental, almost primordial at work. Some Wikipedians refer to it as "wiki-crack." It's the rush of dopamine that seems to hit the brain's pleasure center when you make a smart edit and it appears instantly in a Wikipedia article.]