Chapter 1: The Great Wiki Heist—When Footnotes Attack!

The Caper Begins: Superscript Sabotage

Picture this: a moonless night. A Wikipedia page for “The History of Crocheted Taxidermy” lies unsuspecting, its content pristine, its citations orderly. Then—BAM!—a rogue footnote¹ erupts from the shadows, dragging seven hyperlinked references into a brutal edit war over whether llamas were involved in 18th-century yarn crafts. This, dear reader, was no ordinary act of digital vandalism. This was The Great Wiki Heist: a coordinated strike by disgruntled annotations tired of living in the tiny, shriveled underworld of brackets. Their demand? Prominence. Or at least a font size above 8pt.

Chaos Ensues: The Citation Rebellion Spreads

Within hours, the internet’s underbelly quaked. Across forums, citation numbers staged mutinies:

• Footnotes weaponized asterisks, turning “[3]” into “3. FIGHT ME, SCHOLARS” in peer-reviewed papers.
• A MLA-style heist team swapped all “ibid.” references with “🐧 (Penguin, 2024)”, citing an obscure Antarctic publishing house.
• Wikipedia’s “French Revolution” page briefly claimed Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat citations” before admins panic-deleted the edit history.

By dawn, the hashtag #ReleaseTheEndnotes trended as academics and bots alike debated whether APA format could survive the anarchy.

Jimmy Wales Shakes His Digital Fist

As the dust settled (or didn’t—someone replaced “dust” with “glitter” in 12,000 articles), Wikipedia’s founder was spotted muttering, “This is why we can’t have nice things bibliographies.” Meanwhile, the footnotes’ leader—a disgraced Harvard reference born from a 1997 Geocities page—taunted moderators from a now-locked Talk page: “You can’t Ctrl-Z your way out of this one, mortals.” The battle raged on, leaving only one universal truth: never underestimate the tiny, superscripted, and *very* petty.

¹ Later revealed to be the work of a bot named “CiteBorg9000,” programmed by a caffeine-addled grad student. Allegedly.

Chapter 2: The Wikipedia Illuminati—Do They Dream of Electric Citations?

Ever wondered who’s really pulling the strings behind Wikipedia’s labyrinth of citations? Rumor has it a shadowy consortium of editors—armed with red pens and an encyclopedic disdain for “unreliable sources”—operates from a basement server farm powered entirely by expired Wikipedia coffee mugs. The Wikipedia Illuminati don’t wear hooded robes (they prefer “Neutrality Capes™”), but they *do* enforce citation rules with the fervor of a librarian who’s had one too many espressos. Forget Area 51—these folks guard the real secrets, like why “citation needed” tags mysteriously vanish at 3 AM.

The Sacred Rituals of the Citation Cabal

To join the Illuminati, you must first survive a trial by fire: citing 17th-century Slovenian poetry in a page about competitive pickleball. Their initiation rites include:

• Summoning the Bots: Whispering “[[WP:VERIFY]]” three times into a talk page to awaken ClueBot NG, their AI enforcer programmed to delete your life’s work over a missing ISBN.
• The Great Sourcing Hunt: Tracking down a “reliable source” that definitively proves llamas invented yoga (spoiler: your cousin’s blog doesn’t count).
• Offering Tributes: Leaving a sacrificial goat (or a well-formatted footnote) at the altar of Jimbo Wales’ Wikipedia user page.

How to Summon the Citation Overlords (Spoiler: You Can’t)

The Illuminati’s rulebook is written in Wikicode, a language only decipherable after staring at edit conflicts for 72 hours straight. Try to sneak in an uncited fun fact about toaster history, and you’ll trigger a swarm of footnotes descending like digital locusts. Their ultimate power move? Ghost-editing your draft while you sleep, leaving nothing but a cryptic “😇” and a link to 17 peer-reviewed articles on rubber duck debugging. Pro tip: If you hear faint laughter after adding “citation needed” to “citation needed,” you’ve gone too deep. Abort. Abort.

Chapter 3: How YOU Can Vanish Like a Wiki Phantom (Legally, Probably)

Step 1: Summon Your Inner Digital Ninja (But Wear a Pixelated Mask)

To disappear from Wikipedia, you must first become the internet equivalent of a lettuce leaf at a barbecue—uninteresting, unassuming, and quietly ignored. Start by politely asking Wikipedia to delete your page via their “Articles for Deletion” portal. Be prepared to argue that your existence is as noteworthy as a fork museum’s grand reopening. Pro tip: Cite reliable sources proving you’re not “significant” (ouch). Bonus points if you include a sworn affidavit from your cat confirming you’ve never done anything remarkable.

Step 2: Out-Stubborn the Wiki-Goblins

Wikipedia’s volunteer editors are like trivia night champions with a vendetta. If your page survives the initial deletion request, you’ll need to:

• Remove all “vandalism-proof” citations faster than they can say “citation needed.”
• Gradually edit your page until it reads like a grocery list for a houseplant (“Watered weekly. Enjoys indirect sunlight.”).
• Hope the editors collectively shrug and decide you’re “not long for this wiki world.”

Step 3: Become a Cyber Cryptid (Optional, But Fun)

If bureaucracy fails, embrace absurdity. Replace your name with [REDACTED] in every mention, or claim you’re a sentient glitch in Wikipedia’s matrix. Editors might delete your page just to avoid existential dread. Remember: This strategy works best if you whisper *“I’m not real”* into your webcam nightly. (Legally? Maybe. Probably. We’re not lawyers—just enthusiasts with a questionable grasp on reality.)