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."
The power of the media (Score:1, Interesting)
How to fight vandalism (Score:5, Interesting)
(User:Cyde on en-wiki)
Bingo! (Score:2, Interesting)
When the truth is warped and sensationalized it hurts the overall perception of facts which destroys the public trust of fact. It reminds me so much of "corporate terminology" you know the language - give bad news using positive terms so no one realizes you're giving bad news.
Anyways, as much as I love Wikipedia as a reference. It's that haggling over the subtle wording that drives me bonkers when I'm fact checking. Reading what some of those people argue over is unreal. But I have to do it because I never really know what I'm reading until I investigate. I keep thinking that some articles shouldn't be "public" or finalized until they manage to iron them out properly and remove things like POV, opinion and vaguerities. It's still rough but I think the article shows that they are making an effort to be responsive to these problems.
Re:Resisting Vandalism? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Why I refuse to add to wikipedia anymore (Score:1, Interesting)
I was threatened with a ban on multiple occasions for changing the erroneous "kibibyte"-style size measurements to their proper "kilobyte" style measurements. I participated in many debates about why kilobyte = 1024 bytes, and the pedantic elite moderators simply ignored every argument and threatened me with a ban for "vandalism". I'm sorry? Vandalism? Bullcrap. I was correcting their mistakes, and threatened to be banned for it.
For those nerd pedants who will try to argue this with me, here are my reasons:
* Kilobyte has been 1024 bytes for over 50 years. It is a de facto standard.
* The vast majority of literature uses Kilobyte = 1024 bytes.
* You only confuse people even more by changing the standard for no good reason.
* The SI has no definition for "byte" and their prefixes do not hold any standard meaning over them.
* By changing standards, you end up with things like "tonnes/tons/metric tons". Which means which? It's never clear and causes an endless amount of confusion, which you are now doing to the computer world.
* The only prefix that actually means the number it implies is "kilo", which literally means 1000. The rest have no etymological association with their numerical meanings (ie: Megaman does not mean 1,000,000 men, since Mega does not mean 1 million outside of SI)
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Resisting Vandalism? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is this on the level? (Score:2, Interesting)
It also may have been possible that someone picked up the show early from a satellite feed and then made the Wikipedia edit, at least according to my very limited knowledge of how these cable networks operate.
Re:One Trick pony (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe, but its one hell of a funny pony. I mean have you seen the interview with Eleanor Homes Norton?
-Em
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Wikipedia's erroneous in comparison to...? (Score:2, Interesting)
Knowledge and scientific technique are expanding so rapidly that even those scientists whom the media so often lauds as being 'at the forefront' of whatever field they specialize in can't keep up.
I keep coming across articles which blatantly misuse the chemical analysis process I'm publishing on, and I mean REALLY misuse it to the point that their information is total garbage.
The process Wikipedia represents isn't new...dissemination of knowledge has always been hampered by lies, misinformation, and happy fools. Thankfully, the same knowledge is tempered with time.
looking at the wrong problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Wikiality = great new word (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:1, Interesting)
But really, doesn't any web site on the Internet suffer from most of these same problems? Anyone who can register a domain name, and put up a web page, can post all kinds of false information on a subject. The difference is, there is no input from anyone else to claim the information is false, whereas in wikipedia, there is feedback on the posted articles.
I've seen more BS on privately run web sites that turn up in Google searches than I've seen in Wikipedia.
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Slashmeme error alert! (Score:5, Interesting)
On that sci-fi thread... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I for one (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:1, Interesting)
But in this case, the asshole is right. Wikipedia and other such wikis are prone to teenage pranks and malicious editing. All of which makes them (and most websites) not useful in research. And I don't know that any annonymous site or any nonprofessional site (i.e not a webpresence for a magazine, newspaper, or educational org.) can ever be made reliable enough without a professional editorial staff. I find it pretty sad that college students don't know better.
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course for the most part, that all goes to hell with Wikis. The vast majority of the users aren't checking who the last person to edit the page was, and certainly aren't going to be following the editing trends of those people. On forums, each of my posts has my postcount next to it, and an indication of whether I've been banned. That information may be accessable in Wikis, I don't know, but it's not at the very top of each page to keep unsuspecting users on their toes. Certainly, it's stupid to assume anything on Wiki is true; likewise, it's also easy to make an educated guess as to the likelihood of a page being vandalized (as you said, gravity versus politics). Wikis have the advantage of (on well-constructed pages, which is what "the" Wiki expects) citing their sources, which although they tend to be websites as well (which can just as easily be biased or wrong), it can still give users an impression of how accurate things are. It's usually obvious when there's subjective writing in place, pages containing so-called "weasel words" often get flagged as such, but it may not stick out as blatantly biased or wrong if subtle "facts" are added into otherwise-accurate pages.
User and pseudonym tracking is great for the editors of Wikis, but they're largely pointless for your everyday users who just want to grab the odd fact. What's great is how strong the community is - well over half of the pages I've viewed on Wikipedia have some sort of warning flag on them, whether it marks a stub, inaccuracy, lack of citations, use of 'weasel words', future information, whatever. Does it mean the information is accurate? Absolutely not. But it means that the community is actively checking things, and that bizarre inaccuracies and the like are often taken care of quickly, if only marked as such and not corrected outright.
Doesn't This Just Prove Colbert's Point? (Score:2, Interesting)
By limiting the editing of the page to a small group of 'trusted editors' on the articles invovled, aren't the Wikipedia admins essentially conceding he's correct?
It wasn't about Wikipedia (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:2, Interesting)
For Wikipedia's size, traffic, and number of contributors, there are dumbfoundingly few problems.
No there aren't. There are massive problems with most of Wikipedia, but there aren't enough editors to give a shit.
Is this a problem with Wikipedia, or a problem with your use of Wikipedia?
Oh nice. Ignore his points and turn it around, making out it's him that's the problem. I've noticed this whenever anyone criticizes Wikipedia. Dude, get over it... Wikipedia is increasingly wearing out its goodwill. There is a limited supply of good editors who follow the rules, and an endless supply of bad ones (factoring in all those editors who get banned, log out, change ip and come back and do the same time-sucking thing over again). Wikipedia, as it is currently formulated, is doomed. The whole reason a Wiki resists simple vandalism so well is that it is easier to fix than to vandalize, but Wikipedia vandalism is more systematic, and drags in the byzantine Wikipedia process. It's much more difficult to fix vandalism than it is to do it. It's a slippery slope, and Wikipedia is sliding towards being a shitcan.
He succeded, to an extent (Score:2, Interesting)
Articles were protected, but that didn't stop anonymous editors from asking for the fact to be added http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AFConWikipedia'sAr ticlesforCreationpage [wikipedia.org]on Wikipedia's Articles for Creation page. I'm one of a group of editors who patrol that page, and decide if they're notable and reliable enough to deserve an article, and it doesn't get funny any more.
I do feel sorry for Tawker, though. He was a bit silly with the block summary, and now he's getting threats. And anyway, we block people with Dubya's name in or any celebrity, so when we see someone called Stephencolbert editing, we block and ask for confirmation that it is the Stephen Colbert.
Gunnar wrote on Tawker's blog
Wikipedia's got enough publicity. It's in the top 50 of all sites visited on the Internet according to sources such as Alexa.A good percentage of things on Wikipedia are true, and they're still trying to milk the Seigenthaler controversy nine months on.
What Colbert was really trying to say (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:2, Interesting)
He didn't ignore his points, he addressed them. The OP tried to lend extra weight to his criticisms of Wikipedia with an "And then I quit!" - the response is quite correct; that is not in itself a problem with Wikipedia.
I've noticed this whenever anyone criticizes Wikipedia. Dude, get over it
I think it's because Wikipedia seems to attract far more criticism than many other things, for no good reason. So yeah, dude get over it - it's getting tiring.
There is a limited supply of good editors who follow the rules, and an endless supply of bad ones
So far at least, the good ones far outweigh the bad ones. I suspect that even if good editors give up after a few months or years, vandals give up far quicker. I mean, come on, I can see people finding it a bit amusing to vandalise for a while, but I find it hard to believe people would persistently do so for months or years on end.
Re:One Trick pony (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't This Just Prove Colbert's Point? (Score:2, Interesting)