Welcome to the deep dive. We have a mission today
that is highly unusual. Highly unusual, but honestly
incredibly fascinating once you get into it.
Exactly, because if you really give this your
attention, we are going to explore the exact
intersection of ultimate human triumph. And cold
clinical digital archiving. Yes. That raw adrenaline
fueled feeling of finally standing on the mountaintop
right versus a completely sterile database. Because
we aren't looking at a stack of biographies today.
No, we are not. We aren't analyzing financial
spreadsheets or motivational speeches. The single
document we are going to tear apart and fundamentally
psychoanalyze is one specific web page. And not
just any web page. Right. It is the literal Wikipedia
disambiguation page for the exact phrase, I made
it. Which is a profound juxtaposition right from
the outset. I mean, when you or really anyone
listening thinks of the phrase, I made it, you
picture tears of joy. Oh, absolutely. You picture
a marathon runner crossing a finish line or an
entrepreneur ringing the opening bell at the
stock exchange. or someone holding a hard -won
diploma after years of night classes. Exactly.
It is arguably the most passionate, definitive
declaration of human arrival that we have in
the English language. Yeah. And yet, the document
we are looking at is a purely structural necessity
of an online encyclopedia. It's literally just
infrastructure. Its sole purpose in the digital
universe is to correct internal broken links.
It redirects internet traffic. It is the ultimate
administrative wet blanket thrown over the fire
of human ambition. That is the perfect way to
phrase it. OK, let's unpack this. Because a phrase
so full of raw emotion, so packed with the blood,
sweat, and tears of success is literally categorized
by the internet's largest encyclopedia as a traffic
problem. A navigational error. Right. It is treated
as a mistake. You type in, I made it, looking
for that pinnacle of achievement, and the system
essentially stops you at the door and says, hold
on, which exact version of success are you actually
looking for? It forces you into a digital waiting
room. Yes. But before we get completely lost
in the philosophy of that, I want to make sure
we are grounded in the actual mechanics. What
exactly is a disambiguation page doing on a technical
level? Why does it even exist? What's fascinating
here is how the architecture of Wikipedia handles
the inherent messiness. of human language. An
encyclopedia, by its very nature, thrives on
singularity. It wants one topic to equal one
definitive article. Right, a one -to -one ratio.
Exactly. The database requires a one -to -one
relationship between a title and a subject. But
human ambition and language just don't work that
way. They really don't. The phrase, I made it,
is ubiquitous. It is universally claimed by so
many different people across so many different
mediums that it causes a structural collision
in the database. What's structural collision?
Right. Multiple entities have claimed this exact
phrase as the title of their defining work. So
the system cannot offer a single article. It
has to build a detour. It has to build this bureaucratic
scaffolding, the disambiguation page, to manage
the overflow of triumph. As you said, it is literal
traffic control. And the wording on the page
itself is so telling. Right down at the bottom
of the content area, it gives this explicit,
almost robotic instruction to the user. The part
about the incorrect link. Yes. It says, this
disambiguation page lists articles associated
with the title, I made it. OK, standard enough.
But then it adds, if an internal link incorrectly
led you here, you may wish to change the link
to point directly to the intended article. It's
so clinical. Think about the philosophical weight
of that phrase for a second for you, the listener.
If an internal link incorrectly led you here.
Oh, wow. Imagine how often in your own life you
feel like you are following a link. following
a specific path, aiming straight for that feeling
of, I made it. Only to arrive at a place of pure
ambiguity. Exactly. That is a brilliant way to
conceptualize it. You follow the path, you follow
the link, assuming it leads to a definitive conclusion.
But instead of an answer, you hit a crossroads.
A menu. Right, a menu asking you to clarify your
intentions. The system assumes that arriving
at ambiguity is a mistake, an incorrect link
that needs to be fixed by the user. It demands
that you trace your steps back. It demands that
you point directly to a singular intended destination.
It completely refuses to let you just sit in
the ambiguity of success. Right. And the environment
where this crossroads exists is entirely surrounded
by digital bureaucracy. Heavily surrounded. Before
we even scroll down to see the people who actually
claim they made it, we're confronted with the
user interface. Looking at the exact wording
from our source material, the very top of the
page is a fortress of navigation. It really is
a fortress. We have the main menu, the command
to move to sidebar hide, navigation, main page,
contents, current events, random article about
Wikipedia. Contact us. None of which has anything
to do with success or triumph. Nothing. It's
just the massive imposing machinery of the archive
making sure you know you are inside a controlled
system. And that controlled system is heavily
governed by rules and legalities. Right. At the
very bottom of the document, framing the entire
concept of I made it, we have a stark legal declaration.
Oh, the licensing stuff. Yes. It states, text
is available under the Creative Commons attribution
share alike 4 .0 license. Additional terms may
apply. Wow. By using the site, you agree to the
terms of use and privacy policy. Wikipedia is
a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc., a non -profit organization. I want to push
back on that for a second, though. I mean, isn't
that just standard boilerplate? It is standard.
Every website has terms of service. actually
trying to tame the concept of success, or is
this just the necessary legal reality of hosting
user -generated content in the 21st century?
It is absolutely the necessary legal reality,
but that doesn't negate the profound irony of
the juxtaposition. Okay, fair. The phrase, I
made it, usually implies breaking the rules,
defying the odds, stepping outside the bounds
of normal societal expectations to achieve something
extraordinary. It is an inherently rebellious
declaration. Exactly. But the moment that declaration
is digitized and archived, it is immediately
boxed in by a code of conduct and a cookie statement.
That's hilarious. You can declare, I made it
to the heavens, but the Wikimedia Foundation
Inc. is still going to ensure that the metadata
of your declaration complies with the Creative
Commons Attribution share alike 4 .0 license.
It forces the wildness of human achievement to
conform to strict standardized legal parameters.
Precisely. When you put it like that, it really
does highlight the domestication of the concept.
Attribution share alike. Yeah. You achieve your
wildest dreams, but you better make sure you
attribute the source and share the license. You
must share the license. And the archive isn't
just precise about the legalities. It is incredibly
relentlessly precise about time. The timestamp.
Yes, the document provides the exact anchor for
this digital snapshot. In the hidden category
section it reads, this page was last edited on
22 March 2024 at 23 .50 UTC. 23 .50 UTC. Co -coordinated
universal time. Right. 10 minutes to midnight
on a global clock. 10 minutes to midnight. Think
about the cinematic quality of that specific
timestamp. It's very dramatic. On March 22, 2024,
as the day was just about to roll over into tomorrow,
for anyone operating on UTC, someone or. perhaps
an automated bot, was the backend of Wikipedia,
tweaking the structural metadata of, I made it.
They were finalizing the architectural boundaries
of success right before the day ended. It takes
this massive, abstract, timeless concept and
pins it to a hyper -documented millisecond in
human history. It grounds the ethereal nature
of success into the mundane reality of database
maintenance. Yeah. And that tangibility, that
grounding, finally brings us to the actual core
content of the page. pass the search bars, the
login prompts, the donate buttons. All the transactional
elements of the interface. Right, you reach the
list. The actual artifacts of success that the
encyclopedia deems worthy of disambiguation.
And what is most striking here is the sheer brevity
of the list. It is astonishingly brief. Throughout
all of recorded human history, across every discipline,
this disambiguation page lists exactly three
specific musical works that lay formal encyclopedic
claim to the title, I made it. Just three. In
this specific snapshot of the database, there
is a triad of triumph. Three artists who planted
their flag, claimed the phrase, and broke the
database just enough to require this page. And
the timeline of these three works is incredibly
tight, which is where the real story starts to
unfold. Let's examine that timeline. The very
first entry on the list dates back to the beginning
of the last decade. The wording is precise. I
made it. Cash Money Heroes, a 2010 song by Kevin
Rudolph. Let's look closely at the structure
of that title because it is doing a lot of heavy
lifting. It really is. The artist is Kevin Rudolph.
The medium is a song. The year is 2010. But the
title itself is not just I Made It. It has a
parenthetical built right into the official name.
Cash Money Heroes. Right. I Made It. Cash Money
Heroes. The song comes pre -disambiguated. That
is a critical observation. He didn't just release
a song called I Made It. He included the qualifier.
the parenthetical in the official artistic release.
It acts as its own form of internal traffic control
before Wikipedia even gets involved. But why
would an artist do that? If you were declaring
that you made it, why dilute the statement with
a bracketed corporate shout out? It's a good
question. It's like standing on the summit of
Mount Everest and shouting, I made it. And just
for the record, I'm referring specifically to
the cash money heroes version of making it. Why
tag your own triumph like that? It speaks volumes
about the crowded, hyper -branded nature of modern
pop culture, particularly in 2010. Oh, for sure.
Perhaps simply saying, I made it felt too broad,
too ambiguous to stand on its own in the marketplace
without a qualifier. By adding the parenthetical,
Rudolph roots the abstract, universal feeling
of success to a specific musical collective,
a specific brand identity, and a highly specific
moment in the music industry. A heavily branded
success. Exactly. It's a declaration of success,
yes, but it is a highly qualified, almost corporate
success. It is success within a defined franchise.
A franchise success. That makes perfect sense
for the era. But then we move forward in time,
leaving the 2010s pop rap scene behind. Yeah.
Five years pass. We hit 2015 and the second entry
on the page presents a massive shift. The text
reads, I made it a 2015 album by Diamond Rio.
Diamond Rio. Right. We are shifting from a single
song by a pop artist to an entire album by a
country music group. And we must pay close attention
to the typographical rules Wikipedia enforces
here, because the formatting tells the story.
Oh, the italics. Yes. In the database, the Kevin
Rudolph song is enclosed in quotation marks.
The Diamond Rio album, however, is presented
in italics. Quotation marks versus italics. It
seems like a minor formatting rule, but what
does it actually mean for how we perceive the
work? It denotes the scale and the container
of the artistic statement. In standard encyclopedic
formatting, quotation marks are used for shorter,
subordinate works. A chapter in a book, an episode
of a television show, or a single song. They're
pieces of a larger whole. Exactly. Italics, on
the other hand, are reserved for major independent
works. A full book, a complete film, or a full
-length album. So a song is just a piece? A song
is a fleeting statement. It is three or four
minutes of triumph enclosed in quotes. An album
in italics represents an entire era. It is a
sustained curated collection of thoughts, themes,
and emotions that culminate in that single overarching
title. That is a brilliant distinction. So by
claiming the phrase for an entire album in 2015,
Diamond Rio is stretching the declaration out.
AR. It's no longer just a passing feeling you
get for three minutes on the radio. It is the
defining thesis of an entire artistic project.
Yes. And the sheer bizarre reality of the digital
archive is that this sprawling, era -defining
country album is forced to share this tiny, sterile
digital real estate with a 2010 pop song featuring
a parenthetical brand name. They are neighbors
in the database. They are neighbors. And they
are about to be joined by the final piece of
our triad. 2016. Yes, the third and final entry
on the page moves us forward just one more year
to 2016. The text simply reads, I made it Fantasia
song, 2016. And here we see another shift. We
are back to a song and not an album. So we are
back to quotation marks. But look at the title
itself. Unlike Kevin Rudolph in 2010, Fantasia
didn't build a parenthetical into her title.
The song isn't called I Made It, American Idol
winner, or I Made It, the 2016 remix. The artistic
statement is absolute. It is pure, unadorned,
and unqualified. The title of the track is simply
I Made It. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
we see a fascinating progression in how confidence
is expressed. Fantasia felt no need to qualify
her arrival. The statement stands entirely on
its own. Yeah, it's so powerful. However, because
she chose such a pure title, the database could
not handle it. The encyclopedia itself had to
impose the parenthetical Fantasia song just to
keep the digital architecture from collapsing
in on itself. The artist provided the pure emotion.
And the system provided the required metadata.
Exactly. It's like the system couldn't handle
the raw confidence of it. It had to step in and
say, OK, we respect your pure declaration, but
for the sake of the servers, we have to tag this
as a Fantasia song from 2016. It requires the
tag. But let's look at this whole triad together.
2010, 2015, 2016. That is an incredibly tight
window. Over a mere six year span, we have this
sudden burst of artistic declaration. Three completely
different musical entities. A pop rap artist,
a veteran country band, and an R &B powerhouse.
All felt absolutely compelled to release a major
work with this exact specific terminology. What
is going on there? It invites us to consider
the cultural undercurrents of that specific half
decade. The 2010s. Right. The early 2010s were
defined by the long, grueling recovery from the
2008 global financial crisis. People spent years
trying to claw their way back to stability, trying
to find solid ground. Right. That totally tracks.
It is highly plausible that by 2010, Kevin Rudolph's
song was capturing that initial aggressive push
to return to form and claim a piece of the pie.
Yeah. By 2015, the recovery was more established,
perhaps allowing Diamond Rio to claim it as a
sustained era, a full album's worth of stability,
and by 2016 Fantasia could state it as an absolute
unqualified fact. That makes a lot of sense.
They are capturing the zeitgeist of a recovery
period. But regardless of their individual genres
or their chart success, they are all forever
locked together in this digital amber. This disambiguation
page is the great equalizer. It is the ultimate
flattening of achievement. The encyclopedia does
not care about billboard chart positions. It
does not care about record sales, platinum plaques,
or the subjective emotional resonance these works
had on their listeners. On this specific page,
in the eyes of the database, they are merely
three bullet points under a bolded heading. The
text literally reads, I made it may refer to,
followed by three blue hyperlinks. I have to
stop you there, though. Is it really a flattening
of achievement, or is it just the necessary neutrality
of an index? How do you mean? We don't accuse
a phone book of flattening human lives just because
everyone gets the same font size. Why should
we view Wikipedia's formatting as something that
diminishes the art? That is a very fair counter
argument. An index is inherently neutral, and
its neutrality is its utility. However, the emotional
friction occurs because the subject matter itself
making it is the antithesis of neutrality. Oh,
okay. It is the peak of subjective human experience.
When you reduce the peak of subjective experience
to an objective uniform bullet point, the contrast
feels stark. You work your entire life to stand
on that summit and shout, I made it. And your
encyclopedic reward is becoming a standardized
10 -point font hyperlink sitting next to two
other people who shouted the same thing. Right.
It is a necessary function of the archive, but
it is a humbling one to observe. Humbling is
exactly the right word. you achieve your ultimate
dream, and you become a navigational waypoint.
A waypoint, yes. But wait, it actually gets even
deeper and arguably more philosophical. Yeah.
Because beneath this list of three musical works,
beneath our triad of triumph, there's a whole
other section of the page that completely flips
the script on how we are supposed to view success.
The cross -references. Right. If you scroll past
Fantasia, there is a bold heading that reads,
see also? The See Also section is where the rigid
structure of the database suddenly reveals a
surprising level of thematic intuition. Yes.
Beneath that bold heading, there are no more
songs. There are no more albums. There is only
one single bullet point. One link. One specific
link that the architecture of Wikipedia has decided
is absolutely essential for you to consider if
you are currently looking at the page for I made
it. And that link is we made it. Disambiguation.
And we must look at the exact justification the
archive provides for this link. Right below we
made it, there is a tiny, almost invisible line
of text explaining its presence. What does it
say? It says, topics referred to by the same
term. Here's where it gets really interesting.
Topics referred to by the same term. The algorithm,
or the human editors behind the scenes. the collective
hive mind of the digital archive, has fundamentally
recognized that the singular I is conceptually,
inextricably adjacent to the plural we. It's
a profound connection. You cannot look up the
solitary, ego -driven declaration of I made it
without the encyclopedia gently tapping you on
the shoulder and saying, hey, you really need
to look at the collective version too. See also,
we made it. This raises an important question
and it is something I want everyone listening
to genuinely reflect on regarding your own life
and career. What is the true nature of success?
In modern Western culture, we are heavily conditioned
to celebrate the singular genius. We romanticize
the solitary hero, the self -made individual
who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps and
reaches the summit entirely alone. I made it.
Right. It is an inherently ego -driven statement.
It draws a hard boundary around your own personal
achievement, isolating it from the contributions
of others. Exactly. It's the entrepreneur on
the magazine cover alone. It's the solo artist
accepting the Grammys. Precisely. But the archive,
in its infinite, interconnected, hyperlinked
wisdom, refuses to let the eye stand completely
isolated. It won't let you be alone. By explicitly
forcing a link from I made it to the disambiguation
page for we made it, the encyclopedia is making
a subtle but profound thematic assertion. It
is directly linking individual triumph to collective
achievement. It is suggesting that the two concepts
are not opposites, but neighbors. It's almost
like the page is forcing a moment of humility
on you. Very much so. Imagine you are sitting
at your computer. You just got a huge promotion,
or you just sold your first novel, and you are
feeling incredibly proud of yourself. You type,
I made it into Wikipedia. Maybe you're looking
for a song to match your mood. And the system
responds? The system essentially responds, congratulations.
That's great. But remember, nobody makes it entirely
alone. You had teachers, you had mentors, you
had a support system. See also, we made it. It
forces you to broaden your perspective outward.
And we must also note that we made it is itself
listed as a disambiguation page. The text clearly
says we made it. Disambiguation is not a single
definitive article either. Oh, wow. So the collective
success is just as messy and crowded as the individual
success. Exactly. The ambiguity scales perfectly.
Whether you claim success individually as an
I or collectively as a we, you still create a
pile up in the archive. A pile up of triumph.
There are so many groups, so many bands, so many
collectives who have had to shout, we made it,
that they too broke the database and required
their own traffic control page. That is amazing.
But the linkage between the two pages remains
the critical point. It serves as a digital reminder
that language is fluid and our human experiences
are deeply connected. Deeply connected. The transition
from I to we is perhaps the most important psychological
journey a person can make in their life. And
here it is, represented simply and quietly as
a cross -reference in a digital index. In the
eyes of the database, I and we are just variations
on the exact same thematic frequency. It blows
my mind how much heavy philosophy is baked into
a page that was literally just designed to fix
broken hyperlinks. The architecture reveals a
lot. It really does. Yeah. But I want to shift
our focus now, because the main content of the
page, the 2010 to 2016 triad of songs and albums,
they see also link to collective success. That
is really only half the story told by the document
we are analyzing. Yes, the margins. Exactly.
The rest of the text we're examining is absolutely
covered in what we could call the marginalia
of the digital canvas. It's all the user interface
details, the settings, the toggles, the options
that surround the main text. The UI as text.
Right. And honestly, treating these UI elements
as vital parts of the modern reading experience
reveals some of the most bizarre, hilarious,
and ultimately restrictive things about how we
interact. interact with knowledge today. We often
treat the interface as invisible. We are trained
to look past the menus and the sidebars to get
to the core content. We just block it out. But
the interface is the architecture that governs
how we perceive the information. It dictates
the environment. And because our source document
captured all of it, we are forced to confront
the highly specific, sometimes nonsensical, digital
room in which the concept of I made it is housed.
Nonsensical is the perfect word for it. Let's
look at the sidebar under the appearance section.
Wikipedia gives you tools to customize how the
page looks. Okay. And the very first option listed
under appearance is something so wildly specific,
so utterly whimsical, that I almost couldn't
believe it was real when I read the document.
It's the birthday mode. Yes. The text explicitly
says, birthday mode, baby globe. And right below
it, it gives the current status. Zero disabled,
one enabled. And then a helpful little link that
says, learn more about birthday mode. Birthday
mode. baby globe. It is an utterly surreal phrase
to encounter on a sterile, bureaucratic disambiguation
page governed by Creative Commons licenses. Completely
surreal. We have just spent time analyzing the
deep philosophy of individual versus collective
triumph. We are looking at a six -year bust of
musical declarations and hovering right there
in the periphery of your vision is a toggle switch
offering you a baby globe. I have to ask you.
What could a baby globe birthday mode possibly
look like on a Wikipedia page? The text says
it is currently disabled, but you, the user,
have the power to click enabled. The power of
the baby globe. Imagine you are deep in thought,
pondering the semantic difference between Fantasia's
unqualified success and Diamond Rio's era -defining
album, and you decide you know what this profound
moment of reflection really needs. A baby globe.
It's absurd. What happens? Do digital confetti
cannons go off across the screen? Does the puzzle
piece Wikipedia Globe put on a tiny pixelated
party hat? The sheer whimsy of birthday mode
existing on the exact same page as the stern
legal warning about the terms of use is the ultimate
paradox of the internet. It is. It is simultaneously
a rigid legal document and a potential child's
birthday party just waiting to be activated.
It speaks to the modern trend of gamification
and the desperate need for personalization in
our digital archives. The systems we build are
desperate to be engaging. They want you to stick
around. The architecture knows that a disambiguation
page is inherently dry. It's just a list of links.
So the interface attempts to offer you these
little Easter eggs, these tiny hits of dopamine.
A hit of dopamine from a baby globe. Exactly.
A baby globe to celebrate. What exactly? The
anniversary of the page's creation. Your own
personal birthday. The ambiguity of the feature
itself is palpable, but it highlights how the
archive tries to soften its own clinical nature
with superficial whimsy. Superficial whimsy,
exactly. Because when you look at the other customization
options, the archive's true nature reveals itself.
And it is not whimsical at all. Not at all. The
document details a whole suite of options for
customizing how you view the archive, how you
visually process the concept of success. It lists
text sizes, small, standard, large. It lists
width options for the layout, standard, wide.
It even lists a color beta, which is the theme
automatic light dark. On the surface, the interface
is offering you autonomy. It is telling you,
you are in control of your digital experience.
You can view the concept of I made it however
you prefer. Big text, small text, dark mode.
You are the master of this domain. But here is
where we encounter what I think is the most fascinating
contradiction in the entire text. It is a profound
paradox of control. Yes, the interface presents
you with all these choices, but immediately below
these toggle options, the system absolutely pulls
the rug out from under you. It really does. Let's
look at the exact wording. Under the text size
options, where you can supposedly choose standard
or large, the text explicitly dictates. This
page always uses small font size. It is a remarkable
bait and switch. It is. It gives you the buttons
for standard and large. It lets you think you
have a choice in the matter and then it immediately
issues an authoritarian mandate. No, regardless
of what you click, you will view success in small
font. And we see the exact same mechanic applied
to the width option. You are offered the choice
to select standard or wide, but the explanatory
text below dictates the content is as wide as
possible for your browser window. Right. It completely
overrides your personal selection based on the
hardware constraints of your device. Unbelievable.
But the most striking example is the color mode.
You are offered automatic, light, or dark. Dark
mode is of course incredibly popular for digital
reading, but the absolute unyielding rule of
the page is stated plainly right below the options.
This page is always in light mode. This cage
is always in light mode. Wow. Think about the
incredible irony happening here. We are analyzing
a page that is entirely dedicated to the concept
of claiming ultimate success, of having made
it. of reaching the absolute pinnacle where you
finally have the power and the leverage to call
the shots in your life. You're at the top. And
on this exact page, the digital system rigidly,
almost mockingly, overrides your choices. You
want to view your success in dark mode to save
your eyes. Too bad. You must view success in
the glaring light. No dark mode for triumph.
You want large text so you can really study the
details of Kevin Rudolf's parenthetical. Nope.
Small font only. You're completely powerless
in the phase the archives hard -coded formatting
rules. The illusion of choice is spelled out
right there in the text. It serves as a brilliant
if unintentional metaphor for navigating massive
systems. The archive insists on absolute uniformity
for its structural pages. A disambiguation page,
as we established, is not an article. It is infrastructure.
It's the plumbing. It is the plumbing of the
encyclopedia. And infrastructure does not care
about your personal aesthetic preferences. It
must remain functional, standardized, and unyielding
to maintain the integrity of the whole. Wow.
The fact that the interface still displays the
choices, knowing full well it is programmed to
override them, reflects a sort of bureaucratic
cruelty. It is a constant subtle reminder that
no matter how how much you feel you have made
it in the real world, the moment you enter the
digital realm, you are subject to the unyielding
rules of the platform. You will conform to the
small font. You will remain in the light mode.
You are a guest in the database. That is so deeply
humbling. You are a guest in the database. The
interface is constantly quietly putting you in
your place. And if the unyielding formatting
wasn't enough to humble you, there is also the
constant nagging request for your unpaid labor.
Right in the middle of the page, sandwiched between
the triad of musical triumphs and the profound
see also link to collective success, there's
this bolded, highly intrusive prompt. Our document
captures it perfectly. It says, take a short
survey and help us improve Wikipedia. The quick
surveys prompt, the ubiquitous digital panhandler.
Exactly. The text continues. Take a short survey,
no thanks, or visit survey. And then underneath
it, just to remind you of the bureaucracy, read
our privacy statement, to stop quick surveys
from appearing, change your preferences. It's
a full interruption. It is a complete interruption
of the user experience. You are sitting there
trying to contemplate the ultimate arrival, the
definitive finality of I made it, and the system
is tapping on your screen like a clipboard -wielding
canvasser on the street saying, excuse me, could
you do some free labor for us? Could you help
us improve our data collection? It shatters the
very illusion of finality that the phrase I made
it relies upon. I may it, the implication is
that the long, arduous journey is finally over.
The grueling work is done, the ultimate goal
has been achieved, and now it is time to rest
and enjoy the view. You made it to done. But
the presence of the quick survey on this specific
page serves as a harsh reminder that the digital
archive, and perhaps the human project of knowledge
accumulation itself, is never, ever truly finished.
Never. There is no final destination in a database.
There is always room for optimization. There
is always a survey to take, a preference to update,
a privacy statement to read. The system is inherently
restless and eternally dissatisfied. It's the
eternal treadmill of human endeavor. You run
a marathon, you cross the finish line, you throw
your hands up in victory, you yell, I made it.
And before you can even catch your breath, an
official immediately hands you a clipboard and
asks you to rate your experience on a scale of
one to five. It completely undercuts the majesty
of the moment. It really does. And the options
provided are so stark and transactional, no thanks
or visit survey. Most of us just reflexively
click no thanks trying to swat away the annoyance
so we can get back to looking at Fantasia's unadorned
success. But the prompt is always lurking there.
It is a constant reminder that the machine requires
constant feeding. Your triumph is fine, but your
data is what the system really wants. If you
look at the sheer volume of interactive demands
listed in the sidebar and tool sections of our
document, it becomes almost overwhelming. It's
a lot of links. The text lists commands like
contribute, help, learn to edit, community portal,
upload file, create account, log in. Even under
the tool section, it demands engagement. What
links here? related changes, cite this page,
get shortened URL, download QR code, add inter
-language links. It's vibrating with demands.
The page is literally vibrating with potential
actions. It is not a static marble monument to
success. It is a busy, noisy digital intersection.
It expects you to do something. Let's focus on
one of those tools for a second. Download QR
code. Imagine downloading a QR code for the I
made it disambiguation page. What would a human
being realistically do with that? Print it on
a business card. Print it on a premium business
card. Put it on a billboard. Hey everyone, scan
this barcode to see a list of three musicians
from the 2010s and a link to the concept of We
Made It. The tools provided by the interface
are so immensely powerful and globally scalable,
yet when they are applied to this highly specific,
almost absurdly narrow slice of administrative
information, they feel completely comical. It
is comical. You can download this page as a PDF.
You can get a printable version. You can literally
carry around a physical printed copy of this
digital traffic stuff in your briefcase. It highlights
the modular nature of the platform. The tools
are applied uniformly to every page, regardless
of whether it's a profound historical treatise
or a simple disambiguation menu. Everything gets
a QR code. And all of these tools, all of this
massive infrastructure is maintained by an army
of invisible, often anonymous editors. We get
a tiny glimpse into their world under the add
links section of the document. We see the tabs,
article, talk, English, read, edit, view history.
Let's talk about those view history and talk
tabs. Because that is where the real drama of
Wikipedia happens, right? Absolutely. The View
History and Talk pages are the unseen battlegrounds
of the archive. Every single disambiguation page,
no matter how obscure, has a history of edits.
A whole hidden history. It has a history of debates,
arguments, and consensus building over what belongs
and what must be excluded, who actually gets
the privilege of being listed on the I Made It
page. Was there a fourth artist? Exactly. Was
there a fourth artist? Maybe a jazz musician
from the 1950s or an indie rocker from 2005 who
claimed the title but was deemed not notable
enough by the editors and subsequently deleted
from history. The View History link is a trapdoor.
It dropped you down into the invisible, grueling
labor that maintains the smooth illusion of an
organized universe. It really makes you wonder
how many people have actively tried to add themselves
to this specific page. Well, I'm sure many have.
Imagine some young indie artist records a track
in their bedroom. They are super proud of it.
They call it I Made It. They upload it to SoundCloud.
And then they log into Wikipedia and try to edit
this exact page to put their own name right next
to Diamond Rio and Fantasia. And then the immune
system of the archive. the editors and the bots,
they sweep in, check the code of conduct, determine
the bedroom track doesn't meet the strict notability
guidelines, and ruthlessly delete it. Gone in
an instant. The page we're looking at, this snapshot
edited on 22 March 2024 at 23 .50 UTC, is not
a peaceful list. It is just the current, temporary
ceasefire in a never -ending turf war over the
definition of success. That is exactly what it
is. It is a relentless turf war over the metadata
of success, and the archive has incredibly strict,
deeply technical rules for how this war is waged.
At the very bottom. Yes. At the very bottom of
our document, we see the hidden categories. These
are the invisible tags that the database uses
to organize itself. They are hidden from the
casual reader's view, but they are vital for
the machine's understanding of the page. What
do they say? The text lists. Short description
is different from Wikidata. All article disambiguation
pages, all disambiguation pages. I really need
you to break down that first hidden category
for me, because it sounds completely surreal.
Short description is different from Wikidata.
What does that even mean in the context of human
triumph? It does sound like an existential crisis.
It sounds like an existential crisis for a robot.
My short description of my success is fundamentally
out of sync with the global database of knowledge.
It is an existential crisis for the database,
in a way. To understand why this matters, we
have to differentiate between Wikipedia and Wikidata.
OK, laid on me. Most listeners are familiar with
Wikipedia. It is the front end, the text, the
prose that human beings read. But behind Wikipedia
is Wikidata. Wikidata. Wikidata is the back end
warehouse. It is a central storage repository
for structured data that feeds all Wikimedia
projects. Wikidata doesn't read English prose.
It reads relationships. It reads item A is connected
to property B. OK, so Wikipedia is the storefront
and Wikidata is the massive warehouse out back.
managing the inventory. Exactly. Every article
on Wikipedia has a corresponding item in Wikidata,
and there is a short description that is supposed
to summarize the topic. When the hidden category
flags that the short description is different
from Wikidata, it implies a discrepancy between
the storefront and the warehouse. They aren't
aligned. It means there is a lack of consensus
between the human -readable text on the English
Wikipedia page and the core machine -readable
structured data in the central repository. So
the machine is literally confused about how exactly
this I made it. Yes. Even at the deepest hidden
levels of the code, the fundamental building
blocks of the semantic web, the concept of I
made it resists perfect categorization. That's
wild. The human editors might have described
it one way, but the global database has a slightly
different definition. The structural integrity
is fractured. The concept remains, at its very
core, ambiguous. That is just incredible. I am
completely fascinated by how deep this goes.
We have taken a single webpage that has maybe,
what, 50 actual words of content, three musical
acts, and a cross -reference. Very few words.
And by refusing to ignore the margins, by looking
at the formatting and the hidden text, we have
found an entire universe of meaning. We found
the 2010 to 2016 triad and the typographical
difference between a song in quotes and an album
in italics. We found the profound philosophical
leap from the singular I to the collective we.
We found the authoritarian mandate of light mode
and the bizarre disabled whimsy of the baby globe.
It is all sitting right there in the architecture
of the document. It serves as a profound real
world example of Marshall McLuhan's famous axiom.
The medium is the message. Oh, absolutely. We
cannot separate the information from the architecture
that houses it. In this case, the medium is a
structural disambiguation page. And the message
is that human triumph is inherently. messy. Language
is imprecise. Imprecise and chaotic. And the
digital systems we build to organize, categorize,
and archive our chaotic world are paradoxically
rigid, demanding, and constantly in a state of
unresolved tension. They are so incredibly demanding.
Even at the very end, the page never lets you
rest. The document ends with literal commands,
add languages, add topic. It never lets you just
sit back and enjoy the feeling of having made
it. It always wants more data, more connections,
more translations. Because for an encyclopedia,
the work is never done. An encyclopedia cannot
ever truly make it in the sense of reaching a
final completed state. It's an endless pursuit.
It can only continuously approach an asymptote
of total knowledge, knowing full well it will
never actually arrive. It is the exact opposite
of the emotional release provided by a song called
I Made It. Right, the song ends. The song is
a destination. You listen to it, the song ends,
and you feel the triumph. But the encyclopedia
is an endless, grueling, eternally incomplete
journey. The song is a destination. But the encyclopedia
is an endless journey. And this single webpage,
this specific URL we have been analyzing today,
is the exact spot on the internet where those
two opposing concepts violently crash into each
other. the ultimate intersection. It's like a
traffic cop standing in the middle of a massive
philosophical collision, holding up a clipboard
and saying, excuse me, did you mean the cash
money heroes version of success or the Fantasia
version? And please remember, regardless of your
choice, you are in light mode and your short
description differs from Wikidata. And of course,
please do not forget to take the short survey
to help us improve. Yes. Never forget the quick
survey. Your triumph is not complete until you
rate the interface. Well, we have covered an
immense amount of ground today, pulling philosophy
out of metadata. Let's take a moment to look
back at the bizarre and wonderful journey of
this deep dive. It has been quite a journey.
We started with a single highly specific text,
the Wikipedia disambiguation page for I made
it. A simple list meant to fix incorrect links.
But by reading the entire document, by analyzing
the architecture rather than just the content,
we uncovered so much more about how we process
success in the modern age. We examined the very
architecture of disambiguation, how a universal,
passionate human feeling is reduced to a navigational
error in a database. A mere error. We tracked
the tight six -year burst of musical triumph
from 2010 to 2016. We noted the evolution from
Kevin Rudolph's parenthetical franchise tag qualifier,
to Diamond Rio's sprawling italicized album era,
right through to Fantasia's pure unadorned statement
that required the database to intervene. We took
a massive and I think really important philosophical
detour into the see also section, marveling at
how the system explicitly links the singular
ego -driven success of the I to the messy collective
reality of the we. The transition from I to we.
And then, of course, we plunged deep into the
marginalia, treating the UI as text. We found
the completely baffling birthday mode baby globe
that sits there, disabled, waiting for a party.
Waiting to be enabled? We exposed the paradox
of control, where the system offers custom fonts
and colors while rigidly enforcing small text
and light mode. We looked at the eternal nagging
presence of the quick surveys prompt, reminding
us that the machine always needs more labor.
And we saw how the ultimate declaration of freedom
and achievement is ultimately boxed in by Creative
Commons licenses, privacy policies, and codes
of conduct. All the legal boilerplate. We realized
that in the digital age, success is just another
piece of structured data waiting to be categorized,
tagged with hidden categories alerting us to
Wikidata discrepancies, and tracked down to the
precise, universal minute of 23 .50 UTC. It really
changes how you look at the internet, doesn't
it? Think about your own digital footprint. Every
page you visit, every article you read, every
link you click to define yourself is surrounded
by this massive invisible scaffolding of rules,
history, and metadata. So what does this all
mean for us? That is the ultimate question. How
do you and I reconcile the passionate, blood
-pumping reality of actually achieving our dreams
with the cold, clinical, small -font formatting
of the archive that will eventually record it?
How do we live our vibrant, messy, rule -breaking
lives knowing that history might just categorize
our greatest achievement as a bullet point on
a disambiguation page? It's certainly a sobering
thought, but I actually think it is a strangely
liberating one. Liberating. How so? It reminds
us of the old adage. The map is not the territory.
The archive is not the reality. The disambiguation
page for I made it is not the actual feeling
of making it. The feeling of success, the sweat,
the tears, the joy that belongs entirely to you.
Only the metadata belongs to the Wikimedia Foundation.
That is a great point. But I want to leave you
with a final lingering thought to mull over as
you go about your week. I love a lingering thought.
When you are out there in the real world, chasing
your dreams, putting the long hours, and you
finally reach your ultimate goal. When you finally
stand on that summit and declare to the world,
I made it. Will your success be a single definitive
full page article that tells the whole story
of your life or will it just be one brief entry
on a long ever expanding disambiguation page
of all the different times you had to reinvent
yourself? Are you a definitive article or are
you a disambiguation page of endless reinventions?
That is an incredible thought to end on and something
I think we all need to figure out for ourselves.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive into the architecture of Triumph and the
metadata of success. Keep chasing those goals,
keep paying attention to the margins, and we
will see you next time.