[Citation Needed] 2: The Needening: More of The Best of Wikipedia's Worst Writing

Conor Lastowka and Josh Fruhlinger have compiled a great deal of useless information in "[Citation Needed] 2," which is no problem really, seeing as how so much of it is questionably reliable at best. Wikipedia can be useful as a starting point for research, but given the ability of anyone with an Internet connection to create and alter entries, the quality of the information can be sometimes...ummm...lacking. (Please see Mike Nelson's brilliant introduction for more on this.)These Wikipedia entries are hilarious in and of themselves, but the commentary from Lastowka and Fruhlinger more than double the fun. Take, for instance the entry for the TV series "On The Air" (which I have never even heard of): "Blinky Watts...suffers from 'Bozeman's Simplex,' a disease that causes him to see 25.62 times more than anyone else. It comes off oven mitt. Oven mitt. Oven mitt...." Although the authors include the entire entry, believe me when I tell you that that's a representative sample. Their comment? "Guys, is it possible for a Wikipedia article to have a stroke?" Perfect! Other examples of brilliant skewering are contained throughout, witness the entry for "Cheese sandwich": "A cheese sandwich is a basic sandwich made generally with one or more slices of any kind of cheese on any sort of bread." (Comment: "From the Food Network's newest hit series 'Anthony Bourdain Phones It In.'") My favorite piece of commentary refuted "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" as a masculinity myth (I won't quote it here, but it insightfully skewers much expensive and pointless graduate study.) Other high points are the jocularity inherent in the process of dealing with epenthetic vowels in Scottish Gaelic ("The sequences ms and mch are also epentheticised, just for fun."), and possibly my favorite example of lack of clarity of concept in the book, found under the subject of "Car numberplate game," which reads as follows: "If you call out a license plate that has already been named, or you yell out a wrong state, you have to punch yourself in the face or pull out a hair from your head as a penalty. This is also possible in Ireland." But is it possible in Uganda? How about Monaco? It's so unclear to me. Perhaps I should append that entry after researching this issue a bit more.This book is an extremely quick read (an hour or so,) but some of the entries and particularly the commentaries made me laugh out loud. While it's true that Wikipedia can be useful, "[Citation Needed] 2" makes for hilarious cautionary reading.

If something isn't broken, why fix it?Lastowka and Fruhlinger certainly seem to abide by this as this book follows the same route as its predecessor. Yet, it's ultimately much funnier than the first one and you can tell that there's passion for this project and all the bad editing that Wikipedia can provide.

I really like Comics Curmudgeon and the reviews here made me think this would be as good. It really isn't. The comments are a lot more hit-or-miss and there are more just plain meh moments than I expected. The other issue is that I'm kind of wondering if we aren't getting rolled. I checked almost all the wiki entries as I read along to find the offending/funny statements being commented upon. I would say in half the cases it wasn't there. I understand Wikipedia is a living site and pages change all the time. But that seemed like a pretty terrible hit rate especially in light of the obscurity of the entries. Maybe the authors _planted_ the funny parts in the wiki entries and then commented upon them! That would make the book seem somewhat funnier, anyway.It is a cheap, fast and occasionally fun read. Worth getting (kindle version) for that 1 1/2 shuttle flight where you don't want to do any work.Don N.

Just as hilarious as the first Citation Needed! The "dedication" to the winner of an edit war on a Star Trek article kicks off the humor, and it gets better and better from there. I love how each item has a link to the wikipedia page it's about--it's fun to go and see whether or not these horrifyingly hilarious edits are still on the wikipedia (spoiler: many of them are). The part that makes the book though is the author commentaries. They're full of dry wit and made me laugh out loud more than once. I really hope they do more of these books!

Good

I read the first one and I knew immediately I wanted to read this one as well. So many laughs for 99 cents. It's really shocking how many ridiculous things people have written on Wikipedia, and having it all collected in one place with such funny commentaries is really a no brainer. A small yet fun-packed book of laughs and headscratchers.

It's funny enough. Conor has lost nothing since his days writing for Mystery Science Theater, 3,000. However, I wonder if he's one of the reasons I'm finding too few MST3K DVDs are okay to share with my nieces and nephews. [Citation Needed], both volumes, are funny, but are definitely not for kids. Some of the examples of bad writing aren't for kids, and even more of the comments aren't for kids. I can still share this with my adult friends, and I'm sure they'll enjoy it.

The first [Citation Needed] was so hilarious that the time laps between when I found out there was a second book and when I hit "buy" was probably less than a second. Seriously, these books are hilarious and there needs to be a few hundred more of them.