un_wiki gets quotes from Wikipedia's
(the "free" encyclopedia) Deletion Logs.
The Deletion Log is a list of all the
pages that have abused Wikipedia's democratic remit; it is the last stop on
the way to destruction.
The Log can contain fragments of the offending user-created texts.
un_wiki is a Perl
script that finds
these texts and throws away the rest.
Until 2008 entries in the Deletion Log of the English language
Wikipedia ('en.wikipedia') looked like this:
- 22:22, 14 December 2005 Montrealais deleted "Oh, it already been broughten" (content was: '{{nonsense}}When someone tells you "to bring it on" the only correct response is "oh, it's already been broughten".Slang from a totally cool [...')
Update Aug 2009
Early in 2008 en.wikipedia removed the above sort of material and replaced it with standard notices written by Wikipedia sysops (or 'bureaucrats').
un_wiki was
re-released in 2008 to accomodate this change.
Instead of using en.wikipedia,
presently it translates
material from Wikipedias in several languages (very badly) into English
using online
translators. It's very possible that these
Wikipedias too will follow the lead of en.wikipedia one day. If
so, un_wiki may cease to be.
In Aug 2009 I updated the program and it worked for a few more years.
**Update 2019**
Disclaimer: un_wiki
may, like its earlier incarnations, contain offensive material for
which in-vacua.com
disclaims all responsibility. As of 2013 'un_wiki' stopped working.
>> un_wiki
un_wiki,
like all good software art, was conceived in a bedroom (in early 2006). First it was included in RADICAL
SOFTWARE, an exhibition curated by Domenico Quaranta, March
2006. unwiki_es,
a Spanish language
version appeared at Espacio Movistar, Barcelona June 08, in 'Digital Words'.
I have now linked to an old, saved copy of 'un_wiki' that loops.
It was accepted by the runme.org
and Rhizome software art
repositories. Thereafter, it began a life of its own.
Then it won the Award
of Distinction at Ars Electronica
(2006).
It was also in FILE
International Language Festival (2006), Brazil.
Then it was off to Japan, where it was exhibited in a Japanese language
version at the ICC
gallery in Tokyo (2006).
It also featured in 'Art Tech Media', Cordoba,
November 08.
Image: un_wiki (Japanese version)
Wayne Clements
Connecting Worlds at NTT InterCommunications Center
(ICC) 2006
photo by KIOKU Keizo