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."
Always Hilarious (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Always Hilarious (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Always Hilarious (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Always Hilarious (Score:5, Funny)
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: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:Always Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
you, sir, do a piss-poor job of insulting the man (Score:5, Funny)
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 (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.
Re:Dennis Miller is a coward (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dennis Miller is a coward (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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: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.
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:Always Hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:5, Funny)
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! (Score:5, Funny)
Slashmeme error alert! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashmeme error alert! (Score:5, Interesting)
The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:3, Informative)
Sam Vaknin had an interesting article The Six Sins of the Wikipedia [americanchronicle.com] pointing out the problems with the Wikipedia system. I enjoy using Wikipedia but I am wary of using it has some sort of gospel or authority. The contributers are anonymous and that lack of transparency
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: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: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.
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:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder how much money Britannica paid him to say that.
Re:The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
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 :-)
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:4, Funny)
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:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:3, Funny)
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: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.
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whales (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whales (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree. Lake Erie is the only one of the great lakes to be combustible.
Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc (Score:4, Informative)
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.
I for one (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one (Score:5, Interesting)
With Bush and Gore absent, I'll second that (Score:3, Funny)
The special bonus would be the most hilarious Vice-Presidential debate ever.
Backfired? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody better head over to Wikipedia and proofread the entries for 'irony' and 'satire'.
Re:Backfired? (Score:3, Funny)
Let's check wikipedia and see if it's true.
(It isn't)
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:Backfired? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Backfired? (Score:5, Funny)
All vandals who go onto national TV and announce their intent beforehand will be stopped!
Re:Backfired? (Score:3, Funny)
Dear GOD IN HEAVEN there was a brief period of time when a page claimed there were TOO MANY ELEPHANTS in the world!
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!
Not exactly... (Score:5, Funny)
other interesting elephant facts (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:4, Funny)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Please... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
It's the Subtle Edits that are the Problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's the Subtle Edits that are the Problem... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I would change the wiki entry so that those are back in there, because I feel that they are important topics for someone who is running for reelction in a few months. I'm just not familiar enough with how to edit Wikipedia.
Backfires? (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's a joke backfiring, what's success? Having America celebrate it's 750th birthday? [theonion.com]
Re:Backfires? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Backfires? (Score:3, Insightful)
Again, what happens when Rush tells his millions of listeners to
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
Re:Backfired? Hardly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Backfired? Hardly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is a bit larger than that, and is quite a bit hardier than you imagine.
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: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 illu
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.
Not really (Score:3)
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.
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 when
Re:Wikipedia contains statistical samples.. (Score:3, Insightful)
No backfire here (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure he didn't go to bed crying because he's been blocked from editing wikipedia.
Hello, It's satire! (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't Refute His Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't Refute His Point (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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 (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.
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?
How to fight vandalism (Score:5, Interesting)
(User:Cyde on en-wiki)
Re:How to fight vandalism (Score:4, Informative)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
Strength in resisting vandalism? (Score:3, Insightful)
-dZ.
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?
Backfired? (Score:5, Funny)
Torrent for the show's video (Score:3, Informative)
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!
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.
The best discription of wikipedia I ever heard is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is why... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is why... (Score:3, Informative)
"In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica 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 work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don't Panic
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.
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 v
Re:Resisting Vandalism? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Resisting Vandalism? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh be quiet... (Score:5, Funny)
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?