Dreaded Confusion

[on:]

There are few things that really get my attention.  You know, because I have a short attention span.  Oh look, a blue car!  But seriously.  Maybe because I find most of everything boring.

But when you have read this post, you may think; 'blimey, this is even more boring and/or stupid than I could have imagined!  How did that get so much of your attention?'  Because, as you will see; I simply do not understand it.  And it annoys me.  I need to understand things.  It's like an... OCD thingie.  Even if I could care little about it; I must at the very least understand its basics.

But I cannot figure this one out.  So let's dig into what it is, shall we?

So anyway, I run the Infosphere, as you know, and as such, I am a bit of a Wiki-person.  I even have commit access to the MediaWiki source code, and I am not trying to hide this.  Indeed, I even do some work on Wikipedia, and I watch a couple of pages.  Including all Futurama-related articles on Wikipedia.  You know, to ensure too much crap doesn't happen.

So, almost every month, an anonymous editor comes by and starts editing episode articles and the list of episode articles.  And the only thing this person does is to change the air date.

Some recent examples:

• List of Futurama episodes
  
• Futurama (season 1)
  
• I, Roommate
  
• The Series Has Landed
  
• Love's Labours Lost in Space
  
• And so on...

Now, this editor usually does not get far before they are caught and blocked.  The editor does not come back under a different IP before about a month later, neither do they try to defend themselves.

See, wiki-edits have a 'summary' field to explain your edit.  Where you argue, in short, why you made your edit, if it is not obvious from the edit itself or might cause conflicts.

So I decided to consider this person or persons for what they might probably be;

• A bot - They cannot be a bot.  That seems like a stupid usage for a bot.  Their edits are not bot like, they do several attempts at times, so being a bot is ruled out.
  
• A vandal - You could argue that this is just the work of a vandal, someone who thinks messing up the data is funny.  But the data is consistent.  It is always the same dates for each episode.  That would be a very strange vandal.  Even the motivation is odd.
  
• A genuine editor - Now, this I can sort of understand.  But there seems to be a number of contradicting evidence.  The editor never tries to explain himself.  They never get pissed off by being blocked, even coming back doing it again.  And since they are familiar with the templates used in the articles, I am sure they have some grip of what the 'summary'-field is for.
  

So I cannot label this person.  Now, I tried to wonder; well, maybe they have some information that I do not, about some air dates that are different.

For your ease (and perhaps my own), here is a list of all the air dates used by this editor:

• The Series Has Landed: 28 March, 1999 (diff) (other diff)
  
• I, Roommate: 4 April, 1999 (diff) (other diff)
  
• Love's Labours Lost in Space: 11 April, 1999 (diff) (other diff)
  
• Fear of a Bot Planet: 18 April, 1999 (diff) (other diff)
  
• A Fishful of Dollars: 25 April, 1999 (diff) (other diff)
  
• My Three Suns: 2 May, 1999 (diff) (other diff)
  
• A Big Piece of Garbage: 9 May, 1999 (diff) (other diff)
  
• Hell Is Other Robots: 16 May, 1999 (diff) (other diff)
  
• Bender Gets Made: 23 April, 2000 (diff)
  
• Parasites Lost: 20 May, 2001 (diff
  
• A Tale of Two Santas: 16 December, 2001 (diff)
  
• Anthology of Interest II: 5 May, 2002 (diff)
  
• Future Stock: 1 December, 2002 (diff)
  
• Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch: 11 January, 2004 (diff)
  
• Leela's Homeworld: 15 December, 2002 (diff)
  
• Less than Hero: 7 March, 2004 (diff)
  
• Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television: 14 March, 2004 (diff)
  
• Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles: 28 March, 2004 (diff)
  
• The Why of Fry: 4 April, 2004 (diff)
  
• The Sting: 17 October, 2004 (diff)
  
• Bend Her: 24 October, 2004 (diff)
  
• Obsoletely Fabulous: 7 November, 2004 (diff)
  
• The Farnsworth Parabox: 14 November, 2004 (diff)
  
• Three Hundred Big Boys: 21 November, 2004 (diff)
  
• Spanish Fry: 5 December, 2004 (diff)
  
• The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings: 12 December, 2004 (diff)
  

Now.  You may say; you're fucking crazy.  And I might be.  But as I look at these dates, I first wondered whether this was a local broadcast of the episodes somewhere else, that this person got confused.  But that would not make sense.  Indeed, most of these air dates seem to be out of broadcast and production order.  Also, not to mention that according to this list the second episode aired the same day as the pilot.

Where do these dates come from?  I've checked every site I could imagine that would contain lists of airings.  Even for foreign broadcasts.  It ain't the German broadcast, Polish, Finnish or Ukranian broadcast.  All the others either list no dates or just the American air dates.

So it remains baffling to me, how this thing persists.  I do not understand the motives behind the editor.  I mean, if his goal was to cause confusion and such.  I find it hard to believe that he would consider it a success with only me as the victim.

I am sharing this story, even if nobody cares, in case someone recognises these air dates or dates in particular and can tell me what's up.  It's really bothering me for some reason.

[Reply #1 on:]

I think you have a split personality trying to mess with you.

[Reply #2 on:]

It's probably FYP.

[Reply #3 on:]

Nah, FYP is busy conducting clandestine operations for me. I mean..uh..LOOK OVER THERE, A BLUE CAR!

[Reply #4 on:]

I was actually waiting for quite some time for this to be brought up.

[Reply #5 on:]

Something happened to the space time continuum where that guy lives. It's an isolated bubble of misinformation.

[Reply #6 on:]

The information is accurate.

[Reply #7 on:]

You always loved contradicting me. Continue to do so!

[Reply #8 on:]

Nah, I'm done.

[Reply #9 on:]

Aliens are trying to communicate and arrange an "airdate" (abduction and diligent daily probing sessions) with you, svip!

Other theory that doesn't necessarily contradict it: it's winna

[Reply #10 on:]

Oh my God, he's back!

[Reply #11 on:]

She probably has too much free time on her hands.

[Reply #12 on:]

So any news about that svip ? Just paste the person's ip here from your infosphere place's logs

[Reply #13 on:]

Nah, FYP is busy conducting clandestine operations for me. I mean..uh..LOOK OVER THERE, A BLUE CAR!

And how many blue cars have you seen today, or haven't you been counting them?

The edits might be the work of a very subtle practical joker, but it's hard to imagine someone with patience quite that extreme.  Are the edits all from the same general IP address range?

[Reply #14 on:]

It's not hard for me to imagine, but I'm well aware that it's not the norm.

[Reply #15 on:]

It's how nerds practical joke. They're probably laughing right now with licking their cheetos covered fingers and sipping on that 32 oz Big Gulp. Hm.

[Reply #16 on:]

Are you doing that right now futurefreak?

[Reply #17 on:]

I'm writing a song named Randi's Big Gulp.

[Reply #18 on:]

I'd like to hear a version of that song upon completion.

[Reply #19 on:]

I retain animative and spinoff rights.

[Reply #20 on:]

Took you long enough.

[Reply #21 on:]

Sorry, was checking with my lawyers on the best way to approach this.

[Reply #22 on:]

Sue him to his last, Canadian penny?

[Reply #23 on:]

With the way the market is it definitely would make more cents to go after Canadian currency. Wow, I've seen the American dollar go from more to less valuable than Canadian in the last 5 years.

www.coinmill.com/USD_calculator.html#USD=1.00

so Svip did that mysterious wiki person ever come back?

[Reply #24 on:]

He did not.  That or I have not been paying attention.