"The death of Lieutenant James Smith was known to Wikipedia a full six hours before the police," Gibbs said expositorily. "Why are both of you so late?" he asked Tony and Abby, who were just then coming in.
"Because we spent all Sunday making love," Abby said, giggling slightly, with her arms around Tony.
"Very well," Gibbs said plainly. "Can someone tell me what the Wikipedia is all about?"
"Theoretically," McGee started, "it's an encyclopedia anyone may edit."
"Harnessing the wisdom of the crowds to create a superior reference?" Gibbs asked.
"That's the ideal," McGee answered. "The reality is that a few users, savvy in the politics of the Internet, gain great power on Wikipedia, and put their own egos ahead of both the truth and what the crowds expect of Wikipedia."
Gibbs thought for a beat. "Harm, Ziva, you'll investigate the people who edited Lt. Smith's biography on Wikipedia after his death. Abby, you'll review the ballistics data. DiNozzo, you'll research Wikipedia culture. Taylor,--"
"Excuse me, Boss, wouldn't McGee be better suited to that assignment? After all, he has already said more than I even knew about Wikipedia. I've never even edited it."
"McGee has to go to some more anti-flinch training with me," Gibbs said. "So open an account and start editing Wikipedia. Alright, everyone, let's go! Go!"
Harm and Ziva started going to the door, when Ziva turned back and said to Tony: "Whatever you do, Tony, don't edit your Wikipedia bio to say you have a 13-inch penis."
Tony smiled weakly, and Abby made a face at Ziva. Then McGee chimed in with something a little more constructive: "Perhaps you could use your extensive knowledge of classic Hollywood cinema to edit Wikipedia."
Tony sat down at his computer and decided to follow McGee's advice. He opened an account with the username "filmbuff" and started looking at the article about Strangers on a Train.
About a half hour later, Abby came in to check on Tony. "This article is fairly comprehensive," Tony said. "Except that for some odd reason, it doesn't list the release date."
"You can add it," Abby said. "Just click where it says 'edit this page'."
Tony did so, and spoke as he typed: "Released in 1951. Save this page."
"Easy, huh?"
"Yeah," Tony agreed. "What about Marnie? It says there's no article by that name."
"Then you can write it."
"Alright. Marnie is a film about..." Tony looked back and saw Abby was still there. "Can you come back when I'm ready to post this?"
"Sure, I can take a hint," Abby said and left. Half an hour later, Tony was ready. Abby looked it over. "It's good," she said.
Tony hit save. Then he got a Wikipedia message. "Your vandalism to Strangers on a Train has been reverted. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, you will be permanently blocked? What kind of nonsense is that?" Tony went back to the Strangers on a Train article, and edited it the same as before. In the edit summary, he wrote: "Do you know this film at all? Have you even seen it?"
And immediately he was reverted. "Reverted. Again," Tony said. "And by the same jackass, some a-hole calling himself 'Garbagebagsize11'. Another message, some crap about WP:NPA. What the hell is that?"
"It stands for No Personal Attacks," Abby explained. "It's a well-intentioned policy that is routinely abused by Wikipedia's most vicious warriors. Garbagebagsize11 is particularly vicious."
"And what the hell does 'Garbagebagsize11' mean anyway?"
"It means that supposedly his 'junk' needs a size 11 condom." Abby brought up Garbagebagsize11's picture from ratemyjunk.com.
"Oh, that's been stretched with Adobe Photoshop," Tony said as soon as he saw the picture. "I know because I'm a Photoshop enthusiast, and not because I would actually do that. I wouldn't..."
"Anyway!" Abby said. "Garbagebagsize11 also boasts he's the foremost sockpuppet hunter on Wikipedia."
Tony restored the year of release to the Strangers on a Train article, this time he wrote in the edit summary: "Look at the DVD box." Tony was again immediately reverted, and received a new message. "That's WP:OR and WP:3RR. You're blocked from editing Wikipedia from 24 hours, so you can think about what you've done and repent. What the hell? OR? 3RR?"
"OR stands for Original Research," Abby explained.
"It's original research to look at what's printed on a box?"
"It is if you're not as powerful on Wikipedia as Garbagebagsize11. Who, by the way, has now declared himself Grand Emperor of Wikipedia, more powerful even than the Founders."
"And 3RR?"
"That's the 3-Revert Rule."
"But Garbagebagsize11 also reverted thrice."
"He thinks that rule doesn't apply to him, but that it does apply to everyone else."
Another message. Tony's article on Marnie had been deleted. A hundred people voted to delete it within minutes, and the vote was closed because of WP:SNOW.
Yet another message. "It's been determined that you're a suspect of User:ProbieMcGee," Tony read. "Supposedly, McGee's sockpuppets also include Ducko, Abigail V, Poppy, Hammer and Flightboy77."
"They're all accounts of people who work here," Abby said.
"Alright, I can understand that," Tony said. Then the list got longer. "4.21548sfdssk? Googledestroyer? Darth Tony? Corporalpunishment77? Who the hell are all these people?"
"I've never heard of any of those users. Garbagebagsize11 is just getting greedy now," Abby explained.
"Can't they look at the server logs? Can't they see I'm not making all those edits, operating all those accounts?" Tony asked.
"ArbCom can falsify the server logs, and since Garbagebagsize11 has sockpuppets on ArbCom, he has that power," Abby said. "Look at my list of contributions."
"It says you spent five hours editing Wikipedia yesterday," Tony said, surprised. "But we were making love."
"The whole time. Our contribution logs have been falsified, to support the theory that we have no overlapping edits with all those other users," Abby explained.
Tony shut down his computer. "I can't do anything else on here for today. It's time we found out some more about who this Garbagebagsize11 really is," Tony declared.
"A friend of mine from the CIA," Abby said, tapping her nose twice, "can help us."
Tony was closing his laptop. "The CIA?"
Abby put her hand on Tony's shoulder and Tony looked at her. "The CIA," she said, again tapping her nose twice.
"Oh, that CIA!"
Abby got in touch with the NSA by videophone. "'Garbagebagsize11' is the username of Anthony DiMario, a 35-year-old assistant manager of a 7-11 in Red Bank, New Jersey," said John from the NSA. "He lives in the basement of his mother's house, where he has five computers from which he manages 20,000 Wikipedia sockpuppets. He does that mostly by artificial intelligence, but occasionally he uses the power to take them over and operate them himself directly."
"Like Agent Smith on The Matrix?" Tony asked.
"Exactly," John confirmed. "Half of Wikipedia's arbcom consists of Garbagebagsize11's sockpuppets: Hot Hand Harry, Relevant Sex, Chuck Martin, the list goes on."
"I bet the poor bastard doesn't have a girlfriend," Tony said.
"Or a boyfriend," Abby added wistfully.
"Actually," John said, "he had a girlfriend up until a week ago. Listen to this hillarious phone conversation from two weeks ago:"
"Kelly?" asked DiMario. "I'm going nuts here."
"What did you get blocked for this time?" Kelly asked.
"Edit warring. I'm blocked for thirty minutes. It's been ten minutes, and I'm just going crazy. I'm awake and I can't edit Wikipedia!"
"We could have sex," Kelly suggested.
"How soon can you be here?"
"About twenty minutes."
"My block will expire by then. Maybe you can give me a blowjob while I edit Wikipedia."
"Oh, okay... No, you know what, I won't! I'm through with you! You're not gonna cum in my mouth while moaning about editing an article on taxation of trade routes. I can find a normal man who'll want a blowjob while he's driving, like a normal man. Goodbye!"
"Wasn't that hilarious?" John asked.
"Very," Tony said.
"It's just sad," Abby said.
"Yes, real sad. And pathetic," Tony said.
At the insane asylum
Meanwhile, Harm and Ziva's investigation had taken them to the insane asylum. A guy going by the username of "Joxer53" was a patient there. Joxer53 was the first registered user to edit Lt. Smith's bio after an anonymous user posted the news of his death.
"Harm, do you ever edit Wikipedia?" Ziva asked as they rode the elevator to the Wikipedia ward of the insane asylum.
"A few times. I had the username 'Poppy' for a couple of days, but then I forgot the password. So I made myself the username 'Hammer', but then some idiot reverted all my edits to F-14 and got the Wikipedia ArbCom to rule me an aviator impostor with no knowledge of airplanes whatsoever," Harm said unemotionally.
"How can they make idiotic rulings like that?" Ziva asked.
"Well, it's their website. I don't need some website to validate my self-esteem," Harm said coolly. The elevator arrived at their floor.
The doctor explained the Wikipedia ward. "These patients, when suffering Wikipedia withdrawal, become unmanageably violent. Physically violent. So we give them computers and a server with a copy of Wikipedia from about a year ago. They can edit that copy every day, but every night at midnight, the server resets to the same copy of Wikipedia from about a year ago."
"Don't they realize that they're editing the same day's Wikipedia over and over again?" Harm asked.
"Some of them realize it, and make up grandiosely paranoid stories about someone putting them on a time loop. Others just play along," the doctor explained. "Here's Joxer53."
"You won't defeat me, Garbagebagsize11!" Joxer53 yelled triumphantly at the screen as he pounded away at the keyboard.
Harm and Ziva looked at each other, puzzled, before entering Joxer53's cell. "Joxer53, what can you tell us about Navy Lieutenant James Smith?" Harm asked.
"I can tell you a lot," Joxer53 said. "Just give me a minute." Joxer53 turned to his computer, opened Wikipedia and looked up Lt. Smith. "U. S. Navy Lieutenant James Smith, born July 4, 1970, in Akron, Ohio. Currently the XO of the Crypto Unit aboard the USS Springfield. He has won the Navy Achievement Medal and the National Defense Ribbon."
"What can you tell us about his death?" Ziva asked.
"Not much, since he's still alive," Joxer53 said as-a-matter-of-factly.
"Look, Joxer, Lt. Smith died December 20, 2008. An hour after his death, you edited his Wikipedia bio, you corrected the word 'deid' to 'died'."
"2008? That's in the future. This is 2007. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, WP:CRYSTAL, but everything about the present is right here." Joxer53 lounged back. "Are there any more Navy officers you need me to look up?"
Harm and Ziva realized they weren't going to get anywhere with Joxer53.
The NSA Wikipedia Project
Meanwhile, at the NSA, Jim had gotten very tired of his shift, 8 hours in front of three computers. "I'm so tired of this!" he exclaimed.
Then Kim showed up with Tim. "Just in time for Tim to relieve you, Jim. Are you ready to do a simultaneous save?"
"Just on two of these three jokers." Jim hit save on the Wikipedia pages two of the users had been edited. "Kfred4 started to rewrite the article on moisture vaporators from scratch, and I'm barely halfway done." Jim got up.
Tim sat down. "Can Phatomer get into an edit war with Kfred4 today?" Tim asked.
Kim flipped a coin. "Sure. Make them really be at each other's throats. But keep in mind that Phatomer takes a two-hour nap around midday. Remember, if you get caught, all these are sockpuppets of a 25-year-old gay guy from Iowa with no job and no boyfriend. They can cope with one person operating multiple accounts."
"Can you imagine if Wikipedia's ruling imbeciles found out single accounts were being operated by multiple persons? Their little heads would explode!" Jim said, laughing.
The play within a play
Palmer approached Tony's desk at the NCIS headquarters. "Tony, you should check your Wikipedia bio," Palmer said.
Tony opened Wikipedia. His bio had been rewritten to say "Anthony DiNozzo is a notorious Wikipedia sockpuppeteer and an NCIS impostor." Tony got up. "Alright, that does it."
Tony stormed through an NCIS hallway with Abby in tow. "We will expose Garbagebagsize11's hypocrisy to the Wikipedia ArbCom!" Tony declared.
"You will do no such thing." Director Shepard declared. Tony stopped in his tracks. "The CIA," Shepard said, tapping her nose twice, "has rewritten all your bios in Wikipedia, its servers and its backups to a backstory we can all live with." Shepard turned a computer monitor around for Tony to see.
"Anthony DiNozzo is a fictional character in the books of McGee?"
Gibbs and McGee showed up. "I've been ordered to insert a new subplot into my next book," McGee said. "My fictional counterpart gets a contract to develop a new hit show for CBS about his experiences at NCIS. The characters are thinly veiled copies of his real coworkers, and their names happen to be all of our real names."
For once DiNozzo was silent.
"But I will tell you what you can do," Shepard said. "You can confront DiMario in person."
The confrontation with Garbagebagsize11
DiNozzo and Abby showed up at the basement where DiMario lived. But they hesitated to barge in because of what they saw him doing. DiMario typed something up and said: "Good call, CheckUser. Twenty-six more enemies of mine conveniently disposed of as a single sockpuppetmaster." Then he got up, unzipped his pants and started masturbating, splashing semen on one of the computer screens.
DiNozzo couldn't look. Abby, discreetly looking through the almost-closed door, said to DiNozzo, "You were right, that picture was stretched."
DiMario zipped his pants back up and cleaned the fluid off the computer screen. He sat back down and resumed typing.
"Alright, he's done," Abby whispered. They barged down into the basement.
"The gig's up, DiMario," DiNozzo said, pointing a gun at him.
"Are you here to arrest me, Master NCIS Agent?" DiMario asked.
"Your hypocrisy will be exposed to ArbCom," DiNozzo bluffed.
"I AM ArbCom!" DiMario declared. He jumped into the air, twirled, and landed in front of DiNozzo. Then he turned on a lightsaber and smacked DiNozzo's wrist with it. But DiNozzo's gun stayed put.
"Don't you know that the lightsaber is a fictional weapon in the Star Wars universe?" DiNozzo asked.
DiMario turned back startled. A man wearing a suit and a John Deere ballcap had sat down at DiMario's computers and started typing. "Get off that!" DiMario commanded. The man pulled a gun and pointed it at DiMario.
DiNozzo pointed his gun at the man threatening DiMario. "Put the gun down!" DiNozzo ordered. But the man then shot DiMario, so DiNozzo shot the man. But the man turned out to be an android. Another android, one without coverings, sat down at the computers and resumed typing. "This Wikipedia business is really dangerous, and deadly," DiNozzo said amazed. "I'll take the mean streets of Baltimore any day over this."
DiMario's mom came down to the basement. "Your son just died," DiNozzo said.
"No he didn't. He won't die until I have the money to pay his funeral expenses," she said coldly.
"I will pay his funeral expenses," DiNozzo said magnanimously.
The mother broke down crying. "But what will the tombstone say? He never achieved anything in his life!"
"I can think of a thing or two," DiNozzo said wrily.
After the funeral
Anthony DiMario was laid to rest. His tombstone read "Anthony DiMario 1973 - 2009 Grand Emperor of Wikipedia 2008 - 2009."
"It's one thing to respect the dead," Abby said, "but isn't this going a bit overboard?"
"A little bit."
Abby noticed DiMario's mother and approached her. "It'll be tough to go back to that house. Do you have any remaining family you can go stay with?" Abby asked.
"It's all been taken care of," she replied. A U-Haul truck pulled up. "I'm moving back to Missouri. Some weird rich guy bought my house for ten times what it's actually worth."
Abby and Tony stopped by that house. It was mostly empty, except for the basement, where remote-controlled androids worked tirelessly in front of computers. Abby and Tony then went to a coffee shop, to have espressos.
"I lost my ability to edit Wikipedia soon after I started using it," Tony said. "I don't know what it's like to lose it after using it for five years. I'm sorry you lost your Wikipedia account, Abby." Tony squeezed Abby's hand.
"It's OK. If you had looked at my contribution list before it was falsified by Garbagebagsize11, you would've seen that I wasn't really active until 2006. But all my knowledge of forensics was useless. No matter what I wrote, most of it would get reverted just because Wikipedia's ruling class didn't like me, because they didn't accept me as one of them. My degrees, my conference papers, they were all useless in Wikipedia's eyes, even my knowledge of some pretty standard papers on the subject written by others. Some ignorant 20-year-old with all the time in the world to waste on Wikipedia had more credibility there than I did. Afterwards, I edited very sporadically, limiting myself to spelling corrections. With what has happened recently, I now fully understand Wikipedia's creation myth."
"That would be?" Tony asked.
The Wikipedia creation myth
Peter Griffin had grown tired of his gladiator mice. "Instead of mice, I would like to put of men in a gladiator ring," Peter said.
"The boxing commission would shut it down, just like the FCC shot down PTV," the dog Brian reminded Peter. A little flashback about PTV goes here.
"It doesn't have to be a battle of the fists. It can be a battle of the mind. Ahhh...." Peter said.
"Maybe a website that purports to be a democracy, yet operates like a battleground."
"I got it!" Peter exclaimed. "An open source encyclopedia anyone can edit!"
Back at the coffee shop. "Of course, Peter eventually grew bored of Wikipedia, and moved on to something else," Abby concluded the story. Then: "Doesn't it bother you that we've lost our identity, in a way? It wasn't enough for us to become fictional characters, we're fictional characters created by another fictional character."
"It sucks, but what can you do?"
"Besides, does Wikipedia even matter?" Abby asked.
Just then they overheard a conversation, one which Tony wished he could block Abby from hearing somehow:
"I'm telling you, Darwin is gay!"
"No way!"
"He had a long-term monogamous gay relationship with a crewman from the HMS Interceptor."
"I don't believe you."
"Read this."
"Sorry I doubted you, man."
Abby turned around, and saw that the previously incredulous man was reading a computer with a Wikipedia page on its screen. At the top it had a red tag that said "Some of the information in this article has not been properly verified."
Take the shot of Abby with a bemused look on her face, turned around on her chair, with Tony in the background, and turn it to black and white.