Wikipedia bashed again

An American TV chappie, Stephen Colbert has caused chaos on Wikipedia, and gets blocked from the site. On a segment of his programme he altered details about his own show, something about George Washington and encouraged his viewers to alter the Wikipedia to say that elephant populations had tripled in the last 6 months.

Chaos then erupted as his viewers altered about 20 articles on elephants before they were placed under a lock. Colbert's account was also blocked, which given how easy it is to get a new one was pretty pointless.

Lots of fuss and feathers as a result. I think it's a pretty stupid thing to do, and its shock horror value is about level with someone stealing pennies from a blind man - any of us can do it, and it's not clever, it's morally wrong but it's very easy to do it. However, if it stops even one person from assuming that just because it's in the Wikipedia doesn't make it reliable or a fact, that's a good thing. Let's hope that we don't see a wave of people going in and messing the thing up though, just because someone on television has shown people that they can.

Comments

[Marissa]

I never heard of this news till I read it here. I'd check this out later in Wikipedia if it's still there. :) Anyway, if I remember right, there was also a controversy involving a grocery store manager and Wiki. And yeah, it was still about unscrupulous editing. I guess Wiki really needs to do some more internal control.