Omaha, Nebraska – A Wikipedia editor was summarily dismissed from their volunteer duties last Thursday after repeatedly citing “a vibe” as the primary source for several contentious edits. The incident, which has sent ripples through the notoriously meticulous online encyclopedia community, involved 34-year-old local barista and self-proclaimed “information architect” Kevin P. Henderson.
Henderson, who had been a prolific editor on pages ranging from obscure 19th-century agricultural practices to the emotional subtext of competitive cheese rolling, came under scrutiny after a heated debate on the neutrality of a section describing the current mood of the global economy. “It just *feels* recession-y, you know? Like, the air is thick with impending doom,” Henderson reportedly argued in the edit summary, attempting to justify his addition of the phrase “a palpable sense of unease” to the economic outlook section. “You can’t quantify a vibe, but you can definitely *feel* it. And that, to me, is empirical evidence.” Dr. Evelyn Thorne, 58, head of the Wikipedia Standards and Verifiability Committee, was less amused. “Mr. Henderson’s insistence that ‘the general malaise of Tuesday afternoon’ was a valid citation for global stock market trends demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes a reliable source,” she stated, adjusting her spectacles. “We simply cannot have editors adding information based on their gut feelings, however profound those feelings may be. Our policy is clear: if you can’t link to it, it doesn’t exist, and no, a TikTok of someone looking sad about their grocery bill is not a peer-reviewed study.”
The decision to terminate Henderson’s editing privileges was swift. When asked about his future plans, Henderson, visibly dejected, mumbled something about starting a new online encyclopedia based entirely on intuition and collective consciousness. “They just don’t get it,” he lamented, stirring his oat milk latte. “Some truths are just… felt. And I’m going to build a platform where those truths can finally breathe.” The Wikipedia community, meanwhile, is bracing for a potential influx of new editors attempting to cite “the universe told me so” as acceptable documentation.