Wikipedia Art by Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern is an intervention on Wikipedia which has been discussed on numerous mailing lists over the last month. The intervention consisted of creating an entry, Wikipedia Art, which defined a new art form which could only exist on Wikipedia. The entry was (as anticipated) short lived with the page being removed and archived within fifteen hours of it’s creation.

At 12pm (PST) on Feb 14th 2009, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern launched the “Wikipedia Art” project, along with several collaborators, including Brian Sherwin, Patrick Lichty and Jon Coffelt. An article appeared on Wikipedia — called “Wikipedia Art” — and minutes later, several online essays, interviews and blog postings were released and then referenced on its Wikipedia page, giving it external citations to make it “legitimate” and thereby initiating the feedback loop described in the original article. Within an hour, the article was marked “AfD” (Article for Deletion) for not adhering to Wikipedia standards. The Wikipedia process for AfDs is to engage a debate about the Wikipedia-worthiness of the page for a period of least 5 days to let the Wikipedia community weigh in…15 hours later, “Werdna”, an 18-year old Wikipedia admin, promptly deleted the page, violating Wikipedia’s own requirement of a 5 day period for AfDs.

See here to read the full timeline of events of Wikipedia Art and here to see the archived Wikipedia Art page on Wikipedia.