[Citation Needed]: The Best of Wikipedia's Worst Writing

In the mood for something humorous, light, and snarky, perhaps as a palate cleanser between more serious fare? Look no further than this book.Wikipedia's incredibly useful as a way to learn about pretty much any topic you'd care to investigate. Yet because it's user-edited, it's easy to find horrible writing, obsessive attention to irrelevant details, and aspirations to authoritative style that fall flat. (Which isn't to say that user editing is bad on the whole, just that it has its demerits.) The authors link to and excerpt a couple hundred instances of Wikipedia editorial failure, offering brief comment on each. (Although, not to a particular revision containing the quoted text. Even still, I was surprised by how many of the handful of linked articles I viewed still contained the quoted text, and had not been cleaned up by subsequent user edits.)The style of humor is classic Internet snark (not surprising as the book is a spinoff of the [Citation Needed] blog). If that appeals to you, you'll probably enjoy this for the hour or two it takes to read the entire thing. If it doesn't, get your daily dose of humor somewhere else.

Most of Wikipedia is done by amateurs, but is actually pretty good. Like some 17-year-old girl from Texas singing Etta James on the Motown episode of American Idol.This book, however, is more like the first few weeks of that show. When an obese 39-year-old from Arkansas pretends to be 25 to get on the show, croaks through Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You," refuses to leave the stage, tells Simon Cowell to go back to Great Britainland, then gives it one more shot with "Amazing Grace" before giving Randy Jackson a Bojangles receipt with her phone number written on the back and leaving.Actually, this book is like if you asked that woman to provide 250-300 words on the religious history of Great Britainland.People never cease to amaze you, in the heights and depths of what they are willing to do for free and with no formal training whatsoever.And thank God somebody focused on the depths, because they are 1,000 million times more awesome. [Citation Needed]

There were some real howlers in this one. I would have liked for it to be a little longer, and the book takes a while to let you in on the truly funny passages, but I kept banging the "share" button and posting excerpts to Facebook. In all, it's a goofy little tsate of the internet's derpy side. If you need an hour or two of laughter and a pick-me-up, this is eminently serviceable. I'll be picking up the sequel; I hope a large collection of these are released.

Like the title says, citations are needed for a lot of the claims highlighted in this book. I've gotten a good laugh out of the commentary though, so there is that and at the end, isn't that what matters most?

This was a quick and amusing read, highlighting selections from some really ridiculous writing actually found on real wikipedia articles. The passages are always followed by a snarky italicized commentary. I frequently laughed at the commentary, and was entertained by the variety of odd writing. Everything from unfortunate word choices that gave the selections a twisted double meaning, to obsessive pedantry about ridiculous topics, to out-and-out awful, nearly unreadable writing rounds out the types of things you can expect to laugh at in this funny collection of bad, bad writing culled from the internet's seventh largest website.

I do not recommend this book as reading material. If you need 2 minutes of meaningless time-wasting-by-reading SOMETHING, Anything, this fits the bill.I had assumed this "book" contained examples of Wikipedia Entries where the writing was inherently bad, to the point of being funny. Instead, this is a series of unrelated excerpts from Wikipedia entries, each taken out of context (and only some small piece quoted). These Wikipedia quotes usually have no inherent entertainment value - the writing is usually mediocre, but not bad to the point of being mention-worthy. The entertainment value of this "book" is supposed to come from the author/editor (not sure what to use here) appending snarky comments to each entry, that he imagines to be funny.Sometimes (not often, but sometimes) he is close - his comments are mildly humorous. Most of the time, it's a waste of time - both the wikipedia quote, and the Attached Snarky comment.

Ok, maybe not. but,this is a hilarious compendium of mistakes, poor grammar, and shenanigans that proves true the long discussed Spaceballs Theorem "Evil will always triumph over good because Good is dumb." Are you a teacher looking to prove to your students that Wikipedia is not a credible source for research papers? A Luddite trying to prove that the internet is bad for the world? A cookie fanatic interested in the real story behind the Keebler elves? Then THIS is the book for you.Plus it's 99 cents. Buy the book. Read it on your phone. It's better than reading your friend's facebook status about his ongoing battle with the toilet snake.

This is a really fun book. It's a quick read, and it's something you can pick up and read for short bursts of time.It's kinda like Rifftrax or MST3K for bad Wikipedia writing, except much less boring than that sounds. I laughed out loud multiple times reading the commentary.I only wish it was longer, but hey, [Citation Needed] 2 is out now!

The internet offers a rich vein of humour for anyone who loves to revel in other people's terrible writing. I've lost count of the number of evenings I have wasted on sites such as Failblog, Lamebook, People of Walmart, Whitewhine, Reddit, etc. So I was thinking that the content of this book should be really hilarious if someone had gone to the trouble of compiling the 'Best Of' bits into a book.Unfortunately I was wrong though. It just seems as if Wikipedia just doesn't offer the same 'lulz' that are easier to find elsewhere on the internet. I managed to get through half of the book without cracking a smile once (fortunately this only took 15 minutes).As a freebie, no harm was done, but I wouldn't have been at all happy if I had paid some hard-earned cash for it.My recommendation is to look elsewhere on the internet as there are plenty of really funny examples of human stupidity out there for free if you can be bothered to look for it.

Pro: It's funny, original, and will thoroughly entertain you on a train journey. Con: Only a medium-length train journey. There's not an awful lot here, and the concept isn't really developed beyond the original idea. I would say that it's OK for the price, but then it does feel very like you'e just reading excerpts from the blog- and that's because you are. At the end of the day, I would say that if you enjoy the blog, or other things the authors have done, and don't mind handing over some change for the feeling of having supported original writers, then pick it up and enjoy it for what it is.

So glad I didn't pay even 77p for this book. It promises to be funny, but is in fact tedious and dull. The fact that the authors feel the need to add their own comments under each Wikipedia entry they present to explain why it is 'funny' says it all really. Many of the entries don't really work for a UK audience either as this is very US-centric. I only got a third of the way through before deleting it from my kindle - waste of time and space.

The idea for this book has great merit, but it just doesn't live up to the potential. I was hoping for howls of laughter; this book just raised a fewwry grins and the odd chuckle.Many of the entries are only funny either out of context or because of the comment on it. A couple are genuinely funny, but there's nothing hysterical here.It's OK, but not great - if I'd paid for it I'd be quite disappointed, as a freebie it wasn't the worst way to spend half an hour.

I loved this book. Thank goodness I read it at home, so only my boyfriend had to put up with my explosions of laughter. Try a sample before buying, it may not be everyone's humour but I am really glad I bought the full version. More please!