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

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

Re:Always Hilarious

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

Re:Always Hilarious

The works of "C.P.E. Bach" would not be funny in the least if Peter Schickele wasn't a devotee of both orchestral music and the intellectual culture which surrounds it.

I think you mean "P. D. Q. Bach." C. P. E. Bach was a real composer.

Re:Always Hilarious

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:Always Hilarious

to make things liberal.

He makes fun of the administration.
When the administration is liberal, he'll still make fun of it.
Of course, then some ass will go on about how SC is a republican just attacking liberals.

Guess what? not everyone finds the same thing funny.
Personally me and my friends(left right and middle) find him as funny as hell.

Re:Dennis Miller is a coward

For the analogy to work, your non-cowardly ex-isolationists would have to declare war on Japan, and then inexplicably divert the bulk of military force to conquering, say, Indonesia.

Don't forget the flipside

"A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged", yes, but "a liberal is a conservative who's just been arrested".

"On 9/11 our country was mugged" by terrorists, but now we're learning now what it is to be searched and wiretapped without probable cause, arrested without charges, and detained without legal representation.

I'm hoping that some of these fear-created conservatives will flip over to being fear-created liberals before it's too late.

you, sir, do a piss-poor job of insulting the man

Take pride in your work, dammit. Let me assist.

Dennis Miller has finally taken his seat at the Algonquin Round Table, only unfortunately for humanity, it was moved to the Star Chamber adjacent to Richard Perle's rumpus room. Even now he's smirking his way through The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, secreted away at his Vegas lair amid stacks of John Birch Society literature, states-rights pamphlets, and sticky Jack Chick tracts. Yes, it's a dark day when the witty ally themselves with the witless, but having the spinal column of that guy who managed to be the last guy to wiggle himself into the packed phone booth, setting the world's record, does play a role here. I don't want to go off on a rant here, but Dennis Miller has as much credibility as Edward Kennedy at a water-safety course. His head is so far up Newt Gingrich's ass that he can smell the chemotherapy drugs Newt's bedridden wife was on when he filed for divorce. It wouldn't surprize me at this point if Dennis Miller was discovered entertaining Mel Gibson with "how many Jews will fit in a volkswagen" jokes as they drunkenly swerve their circuitous way to Rush Limbaugh's house to lift up his stomach so Ann Coulter can "polish the little ditto." But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Thank you.

Re:Dennis Miller is a coward

What's wrong with changing your opinions suddenly after a sudden revelation. I used to be a bit of a leftist until I visited East Berlin and found out what the GDR was really like. I became anti-left virtually overnight.

Actually these journeys from one-side of the political spectrum to another are common and not as sudden as they appear. The usual case is that peoples beliefs change over a longer time, but they continue to spout the old stuff so as not to lose face. There then comes an event that maked them unable to "carry out the pretence any longer"/"fool them selves that what they say is what they believe". Then you get this flip.

Re:Dennis Miller is a coward

A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged. Actually, that's not quite right, a social batshit crazy democrat is just a theoretically rightist but in reality not really whose political leaders also major hypocrites albeit not as bad as the front-runners in the
leftist field who hasn't been mugged. Amercan liberals are not liberals at all.

For the record: While technically written in English, the above made no sense whatsoever. I suggest that the author get a good night's sleep, and abstain from listening to talk radio for at least a week.

Re:Always Hilarious

I couldn't disagree more. Well, maybe I could a little... I do agree that Colbert is rarely laugh out loud funny...

However!

I don't think one needs to love the subject in order to satirize it. I don't think this has ever been the case. Do you not find the Daily Show funny either? They are downright vicious with thier attacks sometimes. Very rarely do I get the sence that they have an affection for thier subject matter and I think that's a good thing. If they donned a "just kidding!" attitude, it would remove the potency of both the humor and the very valid cultural statement that they are making. (This all applies to The Colbert Report as well.)

I will admit that the meaness sometime sucks the merriement from the room. The too-true-to-be-too-funny principle often applies for both shows, but while Steward is much better at laughing it off and playing the room, Colbert deliberately wallows in it. (See his keynote at the Washington Press Dinner. How could he even stand it?) But I'll say again: this is not only a good thing for comedy, its a good thing for our culture. Often this satire is so scathing that it far outpaces the standard news organiztions in "sticking it" to the guilty parties, a practice that is very important in a free society. This is what, at root, makes these shows so entertaining: people simply crave that biting hatred of wrong-doing-organizations that seem to be getting a free pass from the rest of the media.

Re:Always Hilarious

He's not funny to you.

To a lot of people, he's damn funny.

At the White House correspondants dinner he was not only funny, he was funny and fearless. It takes a lot of guts for a comedian to play to an audience he can't see while telling the cold hard truth about the audience he can see.

I know the media savaged him afterwards for not being funny. It was cute. But then if I'd deserved the bad job performance review he'd given them - peppered with humour so the folks at home could laugh at their hapless asses - I'd be all cranky and crotchety too.

Tough.

If the press in America won't do their job, they should expect rough treatment from the public.

Re:Always Hilarious

Only on slashdot could this be modded "insightful." Many of the funniest comedians have no love for the things they skewer. According to your theory, George Carlin simply can't be funny as he tears apart the church, business, or idiocy (he is, in fact, hilarious in all cases) . Richard Pryror?. Clearly, we need someone who can appreciate racism to tell jokes about it. Lewis Black? Bill Hicks? You offer a few positive examples of your all-encompassing theory (i.e. there are plenty of folks who skewer things they love) without addressing the avalache of evidence disproving it. Sheesh. If you want to theorize about funny, you better *be* funny. And by the way, just because colbert doesn't make you laugh doesn't mean he's not funny -- it means you dont' get him. There's a big difference. Not every comedian is going for breadth of audience, and that doesn't make them less funny than, say Larry the Cable Guy, any more than topology a lessor math than arithmetic.

Re:One Trick pony

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'

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

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!

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

Slashmeme error alert!

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

Re:Slashmeme error alert!

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

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

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:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

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

> 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

Wikipedia is infested with irrelevancies, self-serving weasel-worded agendas, opinions, and outright falsehoods.

Until two weeks ago, I'd been a Wikipedia editor for over 3 years. I'd put up with all the shit, idiots and vandals because, I quite enjoyed the thought of creating something.

Then I was watching an article... when someone started adding the usual weasel worded outrageous claims, with links to blogs/web forums etc (in other words, not reliable sources). I removed it... as per the Biographies of Living People guideline, and it (predictably) got added back in a slightly modified form by an obvious sock-puppet.

I'd been through this before, and having seen this before (several times), I knew what was coming... an officious and tedious "process", some self-important editor putting himself forward as a moderator, pious intonations of how important "consensus" is... having to treat idiots and obviously malicious editors as if they were serious (and listening to lectures on how all points of view mus tbe represented etc etc)... basically, weeks of shit-eating crap.

And I couldn't be bothered anymore. I logged out, and I haven't been back since. Wikipedia treats its responsible users the same as idiots and vandals. It burns through responsible, constructive, editors in the name of some insane idea of being completely and totally open. Fucking up Wikipedia is a trivial matter (as is dodging around blocks and sock-puppeting), correcting it and getting abuse stopped is a tiresome endless battle with petty admins and labyrinthine processes. Madness.

Good luck to it, but good riddance from me. It is a certainty that it will descend into chaos and end up a huge bag of trivia and libel once it has exhausted the patience of enough good editors. It's a shame... without the ridiculous belief that a completely open wiki somehow has magical emergent properties... it could work. It would certainly be less unpleasant to edit and maintain.

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

intonations of how important "consensus" is... having to treat idiots and obviously malicious editors as if they were serious [...]

The reason people do this is that it often works. Most people are very reactive. If you treat them like a problem, they'll be a problem. If you treat them like a contributor, they'll act like a contributor. And for people who come looking for conflict, not giving it to them means they go elsewhere.

The only real alternative to being insistently nice is unending war with conflict-hungry fuckwads [penny-arcade.com]. For Wikipedia's size, traffic, and number of contributors, there are dumbfoundingly few problems.

And I couldn't be bothered anymore. I logged out, and I haven't been back since.

Is this a problem with Wikipedia, or a problem with your use of Wikipedia?

If you do a frustrating thing too much, you will get fed up with it. Early I ended up hating and quitting a few different jobs because I took them too seriously and burnt out on them. Now I carefully limit my frustration levels to what I can handle. It's the same way with Wikipedia: I do as much as I can where I still enjoy it.

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

No there aren't. There are massive problems with most of Wikipedia, but there aren't enough editors to give a shit.

You didn't hear his whole sentence. He didn't say, "there are dumbfoundingly few problems." He said, "For Wikipedia's size, traffic, and number of contributors, there are dumbfoundingly few problems." If the problems were that massive(to the point were it made the whole project worthless), then I should be able to hit a random article and have the majority of its content wrong.

To make my point I was going to go to a random article to verify it's claims. The article I came across, Billiard Techniques [wikipedia.org] is just happens to be something I know a little about as a amauter pool player. The article has a lot of problems(facts needed verfication, external links would be nice, etc.) but article does contain correct information about Draw and Follow, English, and massé techniques. Not enough to give it much authority, but enough to where someone who didn't know anything about the techniques would understand them after reading it.

It might be tough for you to believe that the Wikipedia can work. I sometimes do myself. I mean, who believe a huge number of
self-centered [wikipedia.org], semi-rational [wikipedia.org], animals [wikipedia.org] that have been fighting [wikipedia.org] with each other for thousands of years would have created something as beautiful as civilization [wikipedia.org]?

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

6. The Wikipedia is rife with libel

I wonder how much money Britannica paid him to say that.

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

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

Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

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 :-)

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

Ehh undergrad papers are largely a joke anyway. The only person reading them is the person grading them, so the only person they're hurting is themselves.

Wikipedia is a bad resource for a number of reasons, the least of which being its somewhat dubious provenance: it is never a primary source, at best a secondary source, and most often a tertiary source, neither of which are incredibly accurate or paint a very good picture of ths subject.

Wikipedia can be a good resource for beginning your research, however. If the article is any good, it will document its sources, which you can then look up and use yourself. The source material usually has more information than is posted on Wikipedia, which might also be useful to your topic.

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

You're forgetting where you are. This is Slashdot [wikipedia.org].

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

The point of the whole story was 2 things:

1) Point of a slight flaw in wikipedia.
2) Relate this flaw to a point about the Bush administration convincing americans, via half truths and out right lies, that Irag has WMD. He pointed out 2 different surveys on what americans think and it showed a significant rise (currently 50%) in the number of people that think Iraq has WMDs.

The point ( a satirical one ) was that you can make the "truth" want you want if enough people believe it, or edit a document.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFT4OfdnVpU&search= colbert%20wiki [youtube.com] for the sketch in question.

Re:Whales

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

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.

I for one

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

Re:I for one

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?

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?

Funny it was, yes.

What happens when the saboteur's objective is sabotage alone, and not simply humor? I've planted plenty of "facts" that are either dubious or patently false; I check on them often, ensuring the longevity of my fallacious implants. After a while, they've become so cannonized that the wonderful bots patrolling these articles actually revert truthful corrections to my false data.

Maybe I'm a sick bastard, but I think that's funny.

Re:Backfired?

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...

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

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.

Re:Not exactly...

Wow. And do you know what, I was just going to add to the elephant page the fact that the elephant is the only animal that has four knees, and wikipedia has locked the page so that amazing fact wont be on wikipedia, so if you want to reference this you'll have to put up with a fuddy duddy old journal-style reference instead:

Weissengruber, G. E, F. Fuss K, G. Egger, G. Stanek, K. Hittmair M, and G. Forstenpointner (2006). The elephant knee joint: morphological and biomechanical considerations. Journal of Anatomy 208(1): 59-72.

Barry

Please...

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...

goldenrod

On that sci-fi thread...

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...

...not the ones that are obvious vandalism.

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

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.

Oh be quiet...

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

Re:This is why...

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

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:Is this on the level?

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?

Backfires?

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]

Re:Backfires?

So what if a few pages displayed vandalized entries for a little while? Two nights ago we were on such high alert that the Stephen Colbert vandalism was reverted on average in under 30 seconds. And that was before I started locking down pages. Considering the vandalism was spurred on by a television show with an audience of over one million people, it only took about half a dozen admins to quelch all of the vandalism.

Backfired? Hardly.

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.

Wikipedia had to limit editing to pages that got vandalized. That doesn't mean any of this "truth by mob" will actually stay in... Wikipedia requires information to be cited by reliable sources, so there's no way that the statements will stick for longer than a few minutes.

Re:Backfired? Hardly.

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.

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.

This is the normal process

The tribe's process for dealing with newcomers, change, or upheaval:

1. fear it
2. hate and persecute it
3. shun and ridicule it
4. make fun of it
5. get bored of it
6. accept it
7. eventually stop caring altogether

You can see this process most clearly, in the evolution of society's treatment of homosexuals over the past 50 years.

Funny how academia is now going through this process with Wikipedia.

Not really

This shows nothing about Wikipedia's strength in resisting vandalism. It is like calling the cops and saying "i'm going to rob a bank now", "look i'm in the bank on Maple and Main stealing money", "Oh now i'm leaving, I'm headed home to 123 Main St."

Wikipedia contains statistical samples..

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

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!

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

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

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.

MOD Parent Down

"I think Colbert's point was that Wikipedia and other vote based knowledge bases"

Wikipedia is not a democracy [wikipedia.org]. Evidence-based, rational discussion leading to consensus [wikipedia.org], not voting, is the primary method by which article content is determined.

He's not banned

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.

Hooray, look at us

"Look at how our system actually works: by protecting two whole articles from vandalism, because they were mentioned a nationally televised show. Ergo we are STILL the sum total of human knowledge, and bigger than the Apollo Program and Jesus."

Wikipedia is the greatest collection of random-third-party factoids the world has ever known, and a great resource, but hardly some grand visionary society of mind. I think Colbert proved his point quite nicely.

How to fight vandalism

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)

Re:How to fight vandalism

point is, Colbert's point in fact, isn't that you guys can't fix the stuff you're looking for, it's that you can't fix the stuff you're NOT looking for. If he had chosen to not go on the air with his joke, then "wikiality" would actually show that his opinion has always been that Oregon is Idaho's Portugal (not Washington's Mexico, or California's Canada, both of which he actually said). No one would have noticed, but it would be up there as "wikifact" anyway.

Actually, his insertions of false material into those articles were both noticed and reverted quickly, one in under three minutes and the other in under seven minutes. This was still long before the show went live, and thus before it was pointed out to anyone.

To all potential vandals...

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

Strength in resisting vandalism?

What "strength in resisting vandalism"? Some editors were watching the show on TV, so they were able to revert the changes. What about the myriad other instances where vandalism is not announced and showcased on TV worldwide?

      -dZ.

Truth may be derived from the article History

If you use a Wikipedia article for information, you should validate that information. Just as you should take reasonable measures to confirm a fact from a book. One way to start with Wikipedia might be to look at the history of changes. You might see evolution of the disputed information.
Sometimes you can read two newspapers with different points of view on a subject and start to see the 'real picture'. The more sources hear about an event from, the more effective your intelligence can be at filtering out noise. The human mind decides on a stopping point where it is safe to assume something is true to a degree of certainty. This is what makes us fairly sure that when we walk, we will not fall through the ground during some subsequent step.
Looking at the history might give insight into how the entry took shape. We will have a larger pool of beliefs from which to harvest the most accurate picture. It's work, but that's what research is.

help me out here

This raises a number of questions in my mind.

Do the wiki admins make a point of collectively watching all television shows to make sure no one is vandalising their site?

What if someone were to announce their wiki vandalism on, say, local radio -- that is, to an audience of only 80,000 as opposed to 8 million -- would they still be caught?

If Steve alters a part of a wiki entry regarding remarks he himself has made about Oregon, would he not then be making a remark about Oregon, thus making whatever new content he entered technically correct?

If Steve had not publicly announced his vandalism regarding whether or not he had compared Oregon to Portugal, would anyone besides Barry Lopez have cared?

Backfired?

Somebody is living in Wikiality.

Torrent for the show's video

Here is the torrent for the show's video. [thepiratebay.org]

Wikiality = great new word

If I recall correctly, Steven Colbert's Word for that skit was "wikiality", a new word that would mean something like, "a reality that may or may not exist but is accepted as true because a majority of people believe it to be true."

This is kind of like his word "truthiness". I, for one, like the word "wikiality" as a way to describe that concept and I think I'll start using it!

No Backfire That I Can See

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!

Backfires?

How so? I think Colbert proved the point he wanted to make quite nicely. The fact that many entries contained the false statistics for at least some portion of time shows the inherent flaws with the wiki system. (Sure, it was only a short period of time - but imagine you're writing a paper on elephants.. and just happen to come upon the entry at that point in time.)

Wikipedia haters: Give it up

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

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

How is that backfiring?

How is that backfiring? Yes, you can protect certain Wikipedia pages from vandalism -- at least temporarily -- by blocking modifications to them. And only people in power can choose to do that. Some areas of Wikipedia have gotten so bad that this needs to be done routinely.

So how does this not demonstrate that there is something fundamentally silly about having it be a collaborative free-for-all? The only way you can prevent abuse effectively is by making it non-collaborative by blocking edits and a non-free-for-all since only admins can call for such blocks. Quite frankly, it demonstrates the inherent nonsensical nature of Wikipedia quite nicely. And we're not getting into the area of libel, and the lack of responsibility therein ...

/. says Colbert's story backfired, how?

Slashdot sucks...seriously. Karma be damed but it needs to be said sometimes. Colbert's story is a day old. Colbert's idea didn't backfire. He spent a mere few minutes talking about Wikipedia and made his point. Left unchecked, Wikipedia can be rife with falsehoods. The elephants page is now correct but that's not to say the rest of the site is accurate. It's news that Colbert went so far as to do a segment on Wikipedia. Only a troll would say Colbert's story backfired, or a website trying to stir up attention.

What Colbert was really trying to say

I don't think anyone here has really captured the message Colbert was really trying to convey. Wikiality is not about the tyranny of the majority, or the "undeserving" importance that some wiki entries get, but that truth is something that is decidable, that it isn't immutatable. The greatest demonstration of this effect is in wikipedia, where changing what is truth is just one edit away. He goes on to satirically say that all truths should be mutuable like this. With millions still believing the government's lies that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, I think we can all agree that wikiality has become the new reality.

Re:Resisting Vandalism?

Agreed that this is probably not the best way to go about things.
It would be much better for the articles to be changed in a background copy, and then upon some sort of verification, or validation of data, it gets switched to main. It would certainly stop the see-sawing of article submission reliably between fsckers and wiki admins.

That said, if we are going to build a collection of the entire of human knowledge, we are going to have a few rough edges on the data. It's an almost insurmountable task to verify each piece of data entered into wikipedia. Some data can not be verified because of current views, or differing conclusions based on research. If were to ask 30 people to go and count all elephants, I would see 30 different method of counting elephants. Some would use statistical methods to build a "pretty close count" while others would get more accurate results.

There is also the problem of verifying unquantifiable data. How many Ants are there in the world?

There are some things that are impossible. People will have to put up with the fact the the information on community based sites are going to be fuzzy at best. Wikipedia will always be in some sort of "truth flux" where the information you see may, or may not contain some truth. The point is, Wikipedia is a great starting point to get information, but linking to a wiki article in a paper as fact will get you laughed off.
I applaud the notion of a centralised source of human knowledge, even if that comes with it's own drawbacks.

Re:Resisting Vandalism?

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?

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.