An anonymous reader writes: Germany gets a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Gutteberg is descendant of old noble lineage, so his official name is very long:
Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.
When there was first rumors that he will be appointed to the post, someone started an experiment: He changed the Wikipedia entry of Mr. von und zu Guttenberg and added the name 'Wilhelm', so Wikipedia stated his full name is
Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.
What happened shows a big problem of our information societry:
The german and international press took over the wrong name in Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites or TV news like spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung.
In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, asking for a proove of the name.
However, the proove was found fastly: On spiegel.de an article pretends to cite Mr. von und zu Guttenberg saying his fullnume: However, maybe the quote was real, but at least the full name seems to be looked up at Wikipedia.
So the circle closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media copied the wrong fact and this media then is used as source to proove the wrong fact in Wikipedia.
Sadly, the situation is even worse: Obviously, there is no proof that this story is right? Maybe Wilhelm is part of his full name?
