Stephen Colbert Wikipedia Prank Backfires 701
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."
Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Source' (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Backfired? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody better head over to Wikipedia and proofread the entries for 'irony' and 'satire'.
It's the Subtle Edits that are the Problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this on the level? (Score:2, Insightful)
This strikes me as a total non-story, or worse, an invented story either to defame the Colbert Report show (possible) or a promotional stunt on behalf of the show.
(Further, anyone who thinks that Stephen Colbert, on the show, urging people to change Wikipedia actually MEANS he wants those people to do that betrays an utter ignorance of what the Colbert Report is: a dead-on satire of the right-wing talk show arena. No one should ever take anything the character of Stephen Colbert says seriously.)
Backfires? (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's a joke backfiring, what's success? Having America celebrate it's 750th birthday? [theonion.com]
Backfired? Hardly. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
This is the normal process (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Wikipedia contains statistical samples.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure he didn't go to bed crying because he's been blocked from editing wikipedia.
wikipedia loses (Score:1, Insightful)
Hello, It's satire! (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't Refute His Point (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, so he urged vandalism of pages about elephants (Score:2, Insightful)
Hooray, look at us (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
The point is... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure it would be quite funny if Colbert hated Microsoft and submitted something to slashdot about one of Vista's new features. "Watch! I'll make it a bad thing in 5 seconds."
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:2, Insightful)
there were callers that made many good points, including these two gems:
- no one would write a credible paper with just one source. if you use wikipedia, back it up with other sources. any source can be wrong, even ones bound and published, just like wiki ones.
- think critically while reading wikipedia. think critically while reading newspaper, the internet, etc etc. don't just dump anything straight into memory, assuming it to be fact.
Re:Backfired? Hardly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Resisting Vandalism? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Sources? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Backfired? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Is this on the level? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Backfired? Hardly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is a bit larger than that, and is quite a bit hardier than you imagine.
Wiki isn't a bad place to start. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Backfired? (Score:3, Insightful)
Strength in resisting vandalism? (Score:3, Insightful)
-dZ.
Re:One Trick pony (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Truth may be derived from the article History (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia provides a reasonable level of accuracy on most subjects for a very little amount of effort. Plus, well written Wikipedia articles also provide sourcing to help confirm the accuracy of the information.
Re:Backfires? (Score:3, Insightful)
Again, what happens when Rush tells his millions of listeners to make sure that all the liberal bias is gone from Wikipedia, or the ICR decides to remove every mention of evolution from every biology page? Defending the obvious target pages like W's is one thing, defending Wikipedia as a whole is another. I'm sure it can be done, but at what cost?
Re:Wikipedia contains statistical samples.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the theory - but as usual, reality is considerably divergent. the 'truthfulness' of an article can be reduced in an instant, and persist in that state for months.
That's the airy handwave that Wikipedia supporters indulge in whenever the Wikipedia is criticized... Yet again - it's at variance with reality. Jimbo Wales and his editorial team are consistently and publically insisting that the Wikipedia is a reference source and is as trustworthy as the Brittanica. When Wales ceases to beat that drum - much of the criticism will disappear.
Re:Backfired? Hardly. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Wikipedia isn't really the target here. I'll bet the majority of "Report" viewers didn't even know what Wikipedia was before Colbert explained it. The target of the satire is the echo chamber of widespread opinion that becomes "fact" when repeated enough. Wikipedia is merely being used as a foil to illustrate this point. Right wing radio is famous for this kind of thing where there's little to no fact checking and mostly relying on what other people say. For instance, it's now a "fact" that Al Gore said he "invented the internet", even though the actual statement he made had nothing to do with inventing and more to do with funding.
Re:Banned? (Score:2, Insightful)
This completely fits in with the "character" he plays on ths show, and even fit with some of the points about the repetition of the WMD "facts" that was made later in the interview segment.
You want to be ticked at someone, be ticked at the douchebags who took his joke seriously and actually went and vandalized the pages.
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, sweet, sweet irony.
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How to fight vandalism (Score:2, Insightful)
ok I made those up. Too lazy to look up actual senator names. 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.
Of course the elephant stuff was going to be instantly caught, everyone was watching. But what about the entries on no-name senators who maybe want to be president some day? No fanfare, just little edits here and there to change stupid things they said, stupid votes they made, stupid DUIs they committed.
As a Wikipedia defender commented: "..and if you find that Wikipedia has poor information about something, you can improve it yourself!"
yes. that's it exactly.
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:Is this on the level? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Wikipedia contains statistical samples.. (Score:3, Insightful)
YAY Huge Win for Wiki (Score:1, Insightful)
Not hard to correct something when it's televised. Sadly, most of the stuff isn't televised and there are hugely biased opinions riddling wikipedia.
Re:Always Hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hooray, look at us (Score:3, Insightful)
Then the joke may be on you.
Colbert's schtick is to demonstrate the stupidity of right wing, nationalistic, religious statists by acting like one. Has it ever occurred to you that he may well have been smart enough to predict that Wikipedia would respond in this way and that this "point" might be part of his schtick?
I wouldn't say it backfired. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Backfired? Hardly. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Backfires? (Score:2, Insightful)
No Backfire That I Can See (Score:5, Insightful)
Backfires? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia haters: Give it up (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
Comedians making bigger waves than Journalists (Score:2, Insightful)
They go on and on about Air America Radio -- a comedy news show financed by comedian and producer Al Franken.
Then they look at The Daily Show and Colbert Report as though these are genuine news outlets, when they are in
fact comedy programs. I think the whole thing is hilarious.
Re:Resisting Vandalism? (Score:2, Insightful)
If Wikipedia is going to go through the trouble of creating a stable branch, Wikipedia ought to consider soliciting scholars and other qualified individuals to scrutinize articles for factual content rather than mere conjecture or personal opinion. In most colleges and universities Wikipedia is not considered a suitable source for research, even as a jumping off point, because its information cannot be verified.
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
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 :-)
That's not the point. (Score:2, Insightful)
His intent is not the point. The point is that he used his position as the host of a TV show to encourage people to vandalize Wikipedia. Whether that's what he really wanted, whether the "sensible" viewers went along with it, etc. is beside the point. The thing is, even if it was a joke, it encouraged people to vandalize Wikipedia. Even if people looked at it and knew it wasn't serious, probably a lot of people felt it'd be fun to go along with it. His action directly contributed to vandalism of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is by no means perfect, of course, but it is an earnest attempt at building something worthwhile. I can't abide people willfully sabotaging that, much less encouraging legions of fans to do it, as in this case and the older Penny Arcade case (though PA at least proposed a very harmless sabotage).
The best discription of wikipedia I ever heard is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Backfires? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or consider the various religious right groups. They have been spending years and a lot of cash to slowly put their folks on school boards across the country, often with great success. This hasn't been a one shot thing: the religious right has figured out that winning big national elections is nice, but winning all the local school board/city council/state representative races is better in the long run. Yeah, they get booted out occasionally or slapped down by the courts, but they are right back at the next election.
Many of the dittoheads can't remember what Rush said yesterday, true. But an awful lot, especially the morally conservative ones, can certainly keep focus for years and decades. (And there are plenty of folks on the left who are just as focused, they're just totally disorganized.)
Re:Always Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:2, Insightful)
You poor, misguided, soul! You are sadly misguided if you think the "theory" of gravity is uncontroversial. [theonion.com]
Dennis Miller is a coward (Score:3, Insightful)
Miller was a leftist, right up until 9/11. Immediately afterwards he was a champion of the right.
To put it plainly, the terrorists scared him into becoming a conservative. Therefore, he's a coward and has no credibility in my eyes whatsoever. Watching that video of him learning how to play golf is one of the saddest and lamest things I've ever seen.
If you're going to be a conservative, then be one based upon the merits of the platform. Don't just jump on board because something spooked you.
Re:Always Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Dennis Miller is a coward (Score:3, Insightful)
This is NOT a real test (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Always Hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
Despite being on The Daily Show, neither Colbert nor Stewart are, strictly speaking, comedians. They are not trying to get you to laugh. They are trying to get you to be entertained. The difference is subtle, but important.
What are they, if not commedians? How about "editorializers", or "commentators", or just plain ol' "entertainers."
Re:Dennis Miller is a coward (Score:3, Insightful)
Psst... there was never an "isolationist" party. And Democrats have stared (and ended) as many wars as Republicans. Might be more, I'm too lazy to check.
i'm a colbert fan myself (Score:2, Insightful)
Whether or not it was satire or funny is irrelevant. If someone you didn't idolize did the same thing (even if just to make a point or a joke), you'd be burning them in effigy.
Re:I for one (Score:2, Insightful)
By the same token, ballsy folks like Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Michael Moore, and Ann Coulter* never run for public office either. It's so much easier just to voice opinions than to actually do anything.
* yes, ballsy. Not so much on the "decency" part.
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Mythbusters (Score:3, Insightful)
/. says Colbert's story backfired, how? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dennis Miller is a coward (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to suggest that I even remotely support Bush going into Iraq or that these circumstances are comparable...
But in WWII the US did divert the bulk of their military force to conquering Germany before they went to Japan
Re:Always Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dennis Miller is a coward (Score:1, Insightful)
One thing I appreciate about Colbert and Stewart is that they'll happily nail anybody who does something stupid to the cross, even the people that they like (or themselves for that matter).
Re:On that sci-fi thread... (Score:2, Insightful)
So Wikipedia doesn't have a page on every single thing in existence - give it time! And yes, there is disambiguation [wikipedia.org]. It's just that no one has written a page for the alternative JEDI meanings.
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."
I think this is difficult to avoid. When you're discussing some concept, whether it's entirely fictional, or a set of beliefs, there's only so many times you can stick "In the fictional world of
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.
You've taken that out of context. It doesn't say "The Force is known...", instead the previous paragraph is talking about how The Force (i.e., fiction) was influenced by real world concepts of a life-force. And this life-force has certain names in China and so on.
Third, as a reflection of our culture, it's way out of whack with what we hold important.
Yes, and? I've often heard this as a criticism of Wikipedia, but I fail to see how. If you don't like the Jedi pages, don't read them. If you criticise that there isn't enough on academic/non-fiction/"important" stuff, then well, it takes time for people to write this stuff. I don't see how the ratios are an issue. What is Wikipedia supposed to do - delete all "non-important" material?
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
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:i'm a colbert fan myself (Score:3, Insightful)
An attack? Is that an attack in The War On Christmas or in The War On Terrorism?
No, you couldn't. Nobody broke-in. Nobody did real damage. Everyone is using Wikipedia the way it was designed to be used. The design just happens to have ridiculous inherent flaws, which he suggested everyone make use-of.
Not at all. Many
If it wasn't for the fact that Colbert was so widely seen, his ploy would have worked perfectly, and gone unnoticed for long periods of time. And, we're still early on. Sooner or later, that article is going to be unprotected, and people will repeated deface it.
And to stop the flames before they start, I've personally written several whole articles for Wikipedia, and seen them get twisted to the whims, opinions, and misconceptions of whomever edited them last. The Wikipedia requires eternal vigilance, and an army of volunteers, which just can't possibly work in the long term.
Don't forget the flipside (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Dennis Miller is a coward (Score:4, Insightful)
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.