Stephen Colbert Wikipedia Prank Backfires

Vicissidude writes "The champion of 'truthiness' couldn't resist making fun of a website where facts, it seems, are endlessly malleable. But after making fun of Wikipedia on Monday night's "Colbert Report," Colbert learned some hard truths about Wikipedia's strength in resisting vandalism. Here's how the segment started: 'Colbert logs on to the Wikipedia article about his show to find out whether he usually refers to Oregon as "California's Canada or Washington's Mexico." Upon learning that he has referred to Oregon as both, he demonstrates how easy it is to disregard both references and put in a completely new one (Oregon is Idaho's Portugal), declaring it "the opinion I've always held, you can look it up."' Colbert then called on users to go to the site and falsify the entry on elephants. But Wikipedia's volunteer administrators were among those watching Colbert, and they responded swiftly to correct the entry, block further mischievous editing, and ban user StephenColbert from the website."

Always Hilarious

[telbij (465356)]

The Colbert report is always hilarious, and this is no exception.

Re:Always Hilarious

[mozumder (178398)]

Unfortunately, he did get the idea from last week's Onion: "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence"

Re:Always Hilarious

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's comments like these that truly make sense when you read them in the same tone of voice that the Simpsons Comic Book Guy uses.

Re:One Trick pony

[eln (21727)]

Other than referring to O'Reilly as "Papa Bear," being loud and obnoxious, and covering his set in American flags, the show is not at all a straight spoof of O'Reilly. A simple spoof of the Factor would give you about 5 minutes of material, but Colbert mocks pretty much the entire media establishment, especially the "opinion" media (which some would argue constitutes all media these days). He also dabbles in some straight Daily Show-style political satire.

I don't know how you could have possibly watched more than one or two episodes of the Colbert Report and still refer to it as nothing but an O'Reilly ripoff. Or maybe you're just repeating what O'Reilly himself says about the show, without having actually watched it yourself.

Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Source'

[by Anonymous Coward]

Who in their right mind would use Wiki as a 'source' document?

It is a great tool and it works as a starting point. You still have to verify data.

Then again, there are people that still try to go whale watching in Lake Michigan.

Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc

['nother poster (700681)]

Then again, there are people that still try to go whale watching in Lake Michigan.

Considering how many whales I've seen on that little beach across from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago I can see why.

That was my WIFE, you inconsiderate jerk!

[mmell (832646)]

Only kidding, honey - it was the other women on the beach, honest!

Slashmeme error alert!

[ChiChiCuervo (2445)]

Unknown SlashMeme Error on line -1, you insensitive clod.

Re:Slashmeme error alert!

[Eccles (932)]

In the U.S., you pay $25 for the wedding, and get a female that you refer to as "wife". After a few years she empties out your bank accounts via divorce and goes back to mother, rather than Mother Russia. Pretty similar, really.

Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc

[s20451 (410424)]

If you care to have accurate information this statement is true of all sources.

My problem with Wiki is not that you have to verify the source. You correctly point out that one has to do that of all sources.

My problem is that anonymous editing (in which I include editing by people with usernames, as they are effectively anonymous) means that you can never know the adgendas or biases of those who are publishing the facts. Some pages are obviously biased, and called out for being so. What I worry about are the specialist pages, where only a specialist could recognize an error or spot a bias.

I would like to see Wiki adopt an "edition" system, where an expert -- whose identity and credentials are verified by Wiki -- "signs" certain articles, to acknowledge that the facts are correct as s/he views them. In keeping with Wiki's philosopy, there is no reason why multiple signed "editions" of articles could exist, signed by different experts.

Under such a system, you would know who takes responsibility for the facts as they are presented, and you would know their motivations, conflicts of interest, and backgroud.

Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc

[sterno (16320)]

My problem is that anonymous editing (in which I include editing by people with usernames, as they are effectively anonymous) means that you can never know the adgendas or biases of those who are publishing the facts.

Actually those using a username would be pseudonymous, and it's an important distinction. The reason it's important is that a given user can establish credibility. That is, you can look at other things they've posted and find patterns behind the changes they make, etc. You can see if they generally add credible information, or distory something.

I tend to trust Wikipedia in relation to the controversey of the topic (and to their credit they mark controversial items as being such). So if it's an article about gravity, as opposed to say the Republican party, I can reasonably assume that the gravity article is accurate where as the one on the GOP may be distorted by either side.

Re:Whales

[eno2001 (527078)]

Waitaminute!!!! What? Lake Erie, 62 feet? Come on dude! What are you smoking? People have drowned in Lake Erie when there have been boat accidents and storms. You can't have that happen in only 62 feet of water. You need something like a million feet of water before that kind of thing is possible. Lake Erie is at least a million feet deep somewhere in the center.

Re:Whales

[EatHam (597465)]

Lake Erie is by far the wimpiest of the great lakes!

I disagree. Lake Erie is the only one of the great lakes to be combustible.

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

[Hentai (165906)]

Finally, my name as well as references to my work were removed from a few articles (for instance, from the entries about the Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Narcissism (Psychology)). At least one of the "editors" who were responsible for what appears to be a vindictive act ("Danny") claims to be somehow associated with the Wikimedia's grants commission.

Oh, sweet, sweet irony.

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

[nuzak (959558)]

> It is a question of time before the Wikipedia self-destructs and implodes. ... wank wank wank wank ...
> I was also banned from posting to the Wikipedia

Wikipedia is infested with irrelevancies, self-serving weasel-worded agendas, opinions, and outright falsehoods. Given all this, why should you even care if you were banned? Get off your cross, no one nailed you up there. If this were an article, it'd get the "helphelpimbeingrepressed" tag.

At any rate, the same aspersions are true of usenet, and it never imploded. Serious scholars long ago stopped posting there the same way serious researchers stopped discussing on usenet. Wikipedia's reputation already imploded, though I still find it a valuable resource whenever I want a comprehensive list of unique vehicles in The Simpsons, for example.

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

[jandrese (485)]

It was hard to read that article over the sound of the grinding axe.

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

[bcrowell (177657)]

Sam Vaknin has been posting this rant in a lot of places. I actually agree with a lot of what he says in points 1-4. However, although I think #5 has a grain of truth in it (about how WP's culture doesn't have enough respect for actual expertise on a particular topic), he's way off-base in saying that there are other, existing models that are better. Actually, WP arose through a process of trial and error, starting with Nupedia, which was much more elitist. Nupedia never got off the ground, because the barrier to entry was too high. If Vaknin thinks there are other, similar projects that have better designs, I have to wonder why he doesn't just put his effort into contributing to them? I think it would be more accurate to say the WP's initial design was great for getting it off the ground, but it's now starting to become less and less appropriate for maintaining a more mature encyclopedia. And finally, when you finish reading the rant, it becomes clear that Vaknin's issues with WP have a very personal angle to them. He seems to spend a lot of time promoting his books, and, reading between the lines, it sounds like he might have tried to do that on WP, and maybe wasn't sufficiently sensitive to WP's culture and standards to handle that correctly on WP. Actually, if my perception is correct about his behavior, then he's part of the problem on WP, not part of the solution; normal, good editors don't enjoy spending year after year tracking their watchlists to protect their favorite articles from decay, but people who are intent on self-promotion may have a lot more stamina.

Personally, after many years of putting a huge amount of time into WP, I've decided to cut my participation back to pretty close to zero, and see if its structure ever gets updated to something more appropriate for a mature encyclopedia. But it's still a great resource, and I still can't resist fixing a punctuation mistake when I find one in an article --- God, it drives me nuts now when I find a puntuation mistake on a web page, and I realize it's not WP, so I can't fix it :-)

I for one

[gentimjs (930934)]

plan on voting for the Stewart/Colbert ticket in '08 !

Re:I for one

[NeutronCowboy (896098)]

Dammit, this should be +5, insightful, not funny. They're the last public figures with balls and decency. I'd be all over them in a heartbeat.

Backfired?

[ivan256 (17499)]

I thought the goal was to be funny. Considering it was hilarious, I think it worked out perfectly.

Somebody better head over to Wikipedia and proofread the entries for 'irony' and 'satire'.

Re:Backfired?

[The Mad Debugger (952795)]

Yes, but they sure demonstrated "some hard truths about Wikipedia's strength in resisting vandalism."

All vandals who go onto national TV and announce their intent beforehand will be stopped!

Not exactly...

[Kuj0317 (856656)]

I went to the elephant listing on wiki that night. Apparently the population of elephants has tripled in the last three months. That is quite impressive, as each female elephant gives birth to one child at a time (twins and beyond are very rare) and there is a 22 month pregnancy period.

other interesting elephant facts

[User 956 (568564)]

Apparently the population of elephants has tripled in the last three months. That is quite impressive, as each female elephant gives birth to one child at a time (twins and beyond are very rare) and there is a 22 month pregnancy period.

I believe I read that same article. I learned that unique among mammals. elephants' legs are actually hollow, affording the opportunity for small creatures, such as mice, to hide inside without detection.

Please...

[Orthodork (975038)]

All it did was demonstrate that Wikipedia is capable of defending itself from obvious vandalism. It does nothing to further the argument that Wikipedia is anything more than a big bag of trivia, edited by people who argue endlessly about whether captain Kirk wore a yellow or marigold shirt.

Re:Please...

[TheOtherChimeraTwin (697085)]

goldenrod

On that sci-fi thread...

[jpellino (202698)]

There's an argument for some sort of flagging system in wikipedia that would differentiate between fact, fiction, speculation, opinion, etc. For instance, look up something like "Jedi".

First, there's no disambiguation - since JEDI is also an acronym for the Joint Expeditionary Digital Information system and for the Joint Enterprise DoDIIS Infrastructure you would think that there's be mention of something besides the fiction. According to Wikipedia, the only Jedi is the fake one.

Second, sometime after the first reference to fictional characters, the article goes into full authoritative mode with passages like "The Force is an incorporeal energy field that is generated by all living organisms and permeates the universe and all things within." If you skimmed over that whole fictional reference, you're in trouble. That section ends with "This life-force is known in China as qi or chi; in India, prana and in Japan as Ki. A belief in a life-force is most commonly seen in the East, practised by Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists, and Hindus." Terrific. A billion or so people just got told that their beliefs are equated with George Lucas' fantasies.

This is also part of a larger problem with the inability of a (larger than you'd hope) portion of the general public to distinguish between fact and fiction. I teach science. For nearly a school year, back in 1986, nearly every lesson on biology that mentioned the brain brought up a question about this brain transplant that they saw on TV and it was so cool - how did they do that? This all came from one fictional made-for-tv movie about a brain transplant called "Who Is Julia?" I got more questions about that than I did about the real events that same year at Chernobyl.

Third, as a reflection of our culture, it's way out of whack with what we hold important.
The Jedi entry prints out at 17 pages.
Stephen Hawking's is 6.

It's the Subtle Edits that are the Problem...

[Quaoar (614366)]

...not the ones that are obvious vandalism.

Re:It's the Subtle Edits that are the Problem...

[SoCalChris (573049)]

Yep, here's a good example.

Conrad Burns, senator for Montana. [wikipedia.org]

Over the last several months, quotes of his which are extremely offensive to many people have been slowly dissapearing from his Wikipedia page. They're still on WikiQuote though.

In 1994, Burns told the editorial board of the Bozeman Chronicle that when asked by a constituent, "How can you live back there in Washington, DC with all those niggers?" he replied, "[It's] a hell of a challenge." When he was asked about the use of the racial slur, he said: "I don't know. I never gave it much thought."

On February 17, 1999, while at a meeting of the Montana Implement Dealers Association in Billings, Montana, Burns referred to Arabs as "ragheads". Burns later apologized.

In 2000, he offended a Billings woman when he pointed to her nose ring and asked her what tribe she was from.

On December 21, 2005, Burns stated that "We've got to remember that the people who first hit us in 9/11 entered this country through Canada." This claim, which is false and is directly contradicted by the findings of the 9-11 Commission, drew criticism from those questioning Burns' grasp of domestic security. Canadian ambassador Frank McKenna demanded an apology from Burns.

Recently, Burns ran into a group of firefighters in an airport, who had just finished fighting a 92,000 acre fire, and were getting ready to return home. He walked up to them and said "See that guy over there? He hasn't done a God-damned thing. They sit around. I saw it up on the Wedge fire and in northwestern Montana some years ago. It's wasteful. You probably paid that guy $10,000 to sit around. It's gotta change." That section is still in there, but I bet it'll be gone within a week.

I would change the wiki entry so that those are back in there, because I feel that they are important topics for someone who is running for reelction in a few months. I'm just not familiar enough with how to edit Wikipedia.

Backfires?

[edremy (36408)]

Umm, I'm not so sure about that. The Elephant page *was* vandalized before it was locked down. So were multiple other pages having to do with Oregon, Colbert, other elephant-related stuff and the like. Every one of these pages is going to have to be either locked or watched continuously by editors for months if not years to prevent additional vandalism. I'm sure other talk show hosts will pick up on this somewhere along the line: can you imagine the edits if Rush or Hannity tells their followers to start changing stuff?

If that's a joke backfiring, what's success? Having America celebrate it's 750th birthday? [theonion.com]

Backfired? Hardly.

[technomom (444378)]

On the contrary, it proved exactly what Colbert's point was. Wikipedia's very nature makes it prone to misttatements and error. Wikipedia practically had to shut itself down after Colbert proved his point.

Seems like the submitter couldn't see the beauty of the satire. Just like Dave Barry's "Dog Ate My Toes" poetry project, it gave us all a good laugh, which is the entire point of humor and satire.

Backfired? No way. We all got a great laugh from this.

JoAnn

Re:Backfired? Hardly.

[Tyir (622669)]

I'm not sure how putting the 'elephant' page and a couple other pages under semi-protection means that "Wikipedia practically had to shut itself down".

Wikipedia is a bit larger than that, and is quite a bit hardier than you imagine.

Re:Backfired? Hardly.

[Stalyn (662)]

Yet the article on Lutheranism [wikipedia.org] is still shorter than the article on Truthiness [wikipedia.org]. The Lutheran movement had a much larger impact on world history than the word 'truthiness'. That was Colbert's overall point; Wikipedia does not represent reality but a subset of reality which he coined Wikiality.

Wikipedia represents the state of human knowledge at some point in time which is vastly different than the Truth. In 50 years an article about Truthiness might be just one line while the article about Lutheranism will still be the same length, if not longer. Wikipedia only has the "truth of the moment" while the Truth is something timeless.

Wikipedia contains statistical samples..

[hhr (909621)]

and you need to repeatedly sample an article in order to determine it's average and standard deviation-- slowly converging on the truth.

Maybe wikipedia should include that information in addtion to the the "This article is contested" warning.

Frankly, wikipedia has a lot of information that you just can't get anwhere else and I will always treasure it for that. But trusting wikipedia for current information-- or opinion, is very dangerous.

No backfire here

[truthsearch (249536)]

Backfired [answers.com]? Quite the opposite. This proves his point. If it's left open you can end up with any facts people choose to insert. The other option is to limit edit rights, which goes against the basic idea behind the site.

I'm sure he didn't go to bed crying because he's been blocked from editing wikipedia.

Hello, It's satire!

[GodfatherofSoul (174979)]

Taking what Colbert did as some deliberate act to sabotage Wikipedia is about as ridiculous as the Bush administration inviting him to the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner [google.com] and expecting him to shower the President with praise. Colbert was trying to make the point that the majority opinion isn't necessarily the right opinion. One of the tenets of our government is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. So, when you hear politicians crying for straight up-and-down votes when our republican (little 'r') government empowers the minority party to fight against it (via the filibuster), you should remember that we don't live in a democracy. That whole skit was also a clever take on how those in power love to rewrite history to put themselves in a better light.

Doesn't Refute His Point

[Zzanath (920280)]

I think Colbert's point was that Wikipedia and other vote based knowledge bases ultimately conform to the beliefs of the majority, and not actual fact. The truth isn't democratic in nature (although truthiness might be). If a bunch of skinheads get together and vote that the Holocaust never happened, that doesn't make it true. Just because a moderator was watching and locked down the entry isn't a display of Wikipedia's power. The moderator can't handle everything in that fashion. If the power of Wikipedia is in the breadth and good will of it's contributors, then unlock the entry and let's see what happens.

Re:Doesn't Refute His Point

[Ignorant Aardvark (632408)]

You may be misunderstanding how Wikipedia works ...

Even if 1,000 skinheads do get together and try to "vote" to change the article on The Holocaust, it won't do anything. We'd simply protect the article and block the lot of them. Wikipedia is not a democracy (this is actually one of our policies), and we administrators have lots of discretion to simply get rid of obviously false or stupid entries. Go check out our articles on Evolution [wikipedia.org] or Global warming [wikipedia.org]; I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

There's this misconception out there that if you get enough people to come edit you can make Wikipedia say anything you want by the sheer sake of having numbers on your side. This is simply not true.

He's not banned

[ThePolkapunk (826529)]

Take a look at Colbert's block log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special: Log&type=block&page=User:Stephencolbert [wikipedia.org] and his talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stephencolb ert [wikipedia.org]. He's not banned, and although he was blocked at one point, that's since been removed.

Furthermore, all the blocks put on his account were due to the inability to confirm that this account actually belonged to Stephen Colbert since creating an account with a public figure's name if you are not the public figure is against wikipedia policy. His account was not blocked for vandalism.

How to fight vandalism

[Ignorant Aardvark (632408)]

There's only one way to fight vandalism, and it's the good old-fashioned way ... get some troops on the ground. I spent two nights ago protecting over a dozen elephant-related articles (Elephant the album, Dumbo the Elephant, Elephant Seal, etc.) and blocked a few dozen people I caught inserting false numbers about elephant populations. As Wikipedia administrators we really have all the tools that we could possibly need. I just looked at the live stream of all edits on the English Wikipedia and reviewed the ones being made to all pages related to Stephen Colbert, Elephants, or northwestern states.

(User:Cyde on en-wiki)

To all potential vandals...

[grumpyman (849537)]

To all potential Wiki vandals... the ceiling cat is watching.

Backfired?

[Stalyn (662)]

Somebody is living in Wikiality.

No Backfire That I Can See

[Heembo (916647)]

There is no way in hades that Colbert thinks this comedic-stunt backfired. He nailed front-page-top-story press in a large number of press sources that target his key demographic. Plus, this was absolutely hilarious (at least to me and most in the kingdom on geekdom). PS: Colbert loves Dungeons and Dragons; the man can do no wrong in my eyes!

Wikipedia haters: Give it up

[damburger (981828)]

Whatever has caused you to have an irrational phobia of this project, I'm sick of hearing you all bitch about it. I don't care if you lost an edit war. I don't care if someone thought your prayer group wasn't notable enough for an entry. And I certainly don't care that wikipedia doesn't agree with your favourite news channel/conspiracy nut.

Its a good project that does what it sets out to do, and does it well. The fact its resisted what is effectively a DDoS attack from a major celebrity with millions of "zombies" at his disposal should testify to that.

No, it isn't perfectly accurate. But if people were to fact check the news as anally as wikipedia is checked, they would find it much, much worse. People find one or two inaccurate articles and hold them up as examples of why wikipedia "doesn't work" whilst failing to mention the thousands of articles that are accurate.

The best discription of wikipedia I ever heard is

[geekoid (135745)]

The problem with Wikipedia is the it only works in practice, not in theory.

Re:This is why...

[LouisZepher (643097)]

In many of the more relaxed areas of the world, Wikipedia has already supplanted the local libray as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal -or at least wildly inaccurate- it scores over the older more pedestrian collection in two important respects. First, it is doesn't charge late-fees; and second, it allows lazy people to do research without having to get their fat-asses outside. (With apologies to DNA...)

looking at the wrong problem

[enjahova (812395)]

Wikipedia can't be reliable. People do not take it seriosly, and therefore don't care if it's facts are true. I had teachers who would put false info up to see if we would cite it or not. This is a load of bull. If people put what they were sure to almsot certain was true, we wouldn't have these problems.

The way you are framing the problem makes it a futile effort. You cannot say "if only everybody would do this, then..." because you will never get everybody to do one thing or act in one way. In the real world solutions involve creating systems that encourage certain behavior. Capitalism "works" because it encourages the creation of wealth. Communism didn't work out because it expected people to behave a certain way, it didn't encourage behavior.

If you look at wikipedia in this way, it is just a new type of system made possible because of new technologies. Wikipedia encourages people to contribute, and it is being refined as a system to handle uses and abuses that don't contribute to its goal. If the goal is to be an encyclopedia of human knowledge, I believe it stands a far better chance then any encyclopedia or company in history. Wikipedia is just a very efficient way of collaborating on information, with few limits. It is more like the first time the abstract class of information sharing has been instantiated, even tho its children classes have been objects for a long time. Look at a dictionary, communication is a lot more flexible than the words in a dictionary but it is still an attempt to collaborate on meaning. Look at peer-reviewed journals, its just a few people collaborating and we all trust them (for the most part) because they are experts. Look at published books, its one or a few peoples expression of knowledge.

For so long we have trusted these children objects because we believe in experts and we believe in authority. The dissemination of knowledge has always been from the top down, from authority to the masses, from experts to the laymen. The internet has gone and thrown a nice big wrench in this historical system. All of the sudden nobody is an expert, all of the sudden information can come from anywhere. All of the sudden we don't have this magical authority anymore to tell us what is right and wrong, and for many people that is unimaginable.

I firmly believe that the internet will do away with peer-reviewed academic journals, and all other sorts of authority. It may be a while off, and many people may call me crazy, but I see it. Instant communication using wiki like technologies will allow the efficient review and commenting of any academic work. I envision a system that has been worked out over time, perhaps derived from wikipedia or even slashcode that allows people to weigh in on the merits and flaws of a work. History of revision, immediate feedback and efficient communication will all supercede the percieved authority that money can buy.

Perhaps today you cannot cite wikipedia in an academic setting, but do not laugh at the thought that one day wikipedia, google scholar, slashdot, and all of the similar endevours in their vein will bring about a complete shift in what information is trusted. Bloggers were supposed to do this with news, and I argue that they have only begun. I predict in the next 5 years the media landscape will be completely unrecognizable from the one we have today, and further more todays media landscape will be laughed at for the inefficient joke that it is.

Re:Resisting Vandalism?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

It seems to me that Wikipedia needs a 'stable' branch. Things that have been checked by n registered users and are more than m days old in the main branch get promoted to the stable branch. One of the problems with Wikipedia that has been in the news recently is the fact that no matter how little time elapses between a page being vandalised and being repaired, someone will have looked at it in the meantime.

Casual users should be able to switch between the two easily and decide whether they wanted potentially less trustworthy, but more current, information, or the vice versa.

Re:Resisting Vandalism?

[Ignorant Aardvark (632408)]

What you are describing is the stable versions proposal, and it's currently being worked on by the developers. Basically, an administrator would be able to go in and flag a specific revision as being "stable", and that's what all readers of the article would see. You could of course choose to see the development version or make edits to the development version, but it will take an administrator to update the stable version, and he will do so by comparing the changes since the last stable version and making sure everything is legitimate.

Oh be quiet...

[Mister Transistor (259842)]

After all, Oregon is just Hawaii's Europe...

Re:Is this on the level?

[roystgnr (4015)]

Duh, talkshows are never aired live.

You're responding to a comment that specifically mentions that Colbert "taped the show"... and yet two moderators think you're "Insightful" rather than "Redundant". How did that happen?

And by the way, don't you realize that talkshows usually aren't aired live?