Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club

Submission 10,835

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About

Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club, or CFWC, is a Facebook group in which users share strange and esoteric articles and entries from Wikipedia. It started in September of 2013. As of October 20th, 2016, the group has nearly 42,000 followers.

History

The group launched on September 24th, 2013.^[1] Its format encourages users to post articles from Wikipedia they find fascinating, usually with some text from the article, and long discussions follow. Certain articles have special notoriety within the group, including "Toast Sandwich"^[3] and "List of lists of lists."^[4]^[8]

Over the course of the following year, CFWC gained over 24,000 members and began to attract media coverage. It was praised by several outlets, most notably The Observer^[2] and Mic.^[5] Paste^[6] named its Twitter the 14th-best Twitter account of 2014.

Criticism

As the group got popular, its moderation, particularly its application of trigger warnings and liberal banning policies, drew intense criticism. In 2014, Vice^[7] called it "a Shitshow of Esoterica, Political Correctness, and Trigger Warnings," including screenshots of moderators acting harshly.

In a since-deleted article, Rory Cox of The Tab called the moderators "bands of extremist ideologues [who] patrol comment threads wielding 'the banhammer'." This type of moderation also characterized the group's now-defunct sister site, coolfreaks.jpg. Moderation has gotten less strict in the past two years, and the group now provides an extensive list of rules for posting.^[9]