The 15 Biggest Wikipedia Blunders - MSN Tech & Gadgets
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/22/wikipedia_vandalism_crackdown/
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The 15 Biggest Wikipedia Blunders
By JR Raphael, PC World
Wikipedia is about to start restricting the editing of some of its
articles. Judging by these past blunders, the change may not be a bad
thing.
Wikipedia has just announced plans to restrict the editing of some of
its articles. Under the new system, any changes made to pages of still-
living people will have to be approved by an "experienced volunteer"
before going online.
The change marks a significant shift in the philosophy of the openly
edited, user-controlled encyclopedia -- and that may not be a bad
thing. Here are 15 of the biggest Wikipedia blunders the new editing
system might have prevented. These false facts, according to widely
published accounts, all appeared on the Wikipedia site at some point.
1. Robbie Williams eats domestic pets in pubs for money.
To be fair, we can't disprove this statement, which popped up on the
singer's Wikipedia page in 2006. But we'll give him the benefit of the
doubt.
2. David Beckham was a Chinese goalkeeper in the 18th century.
And you thought scoring Posh Spice was impressive.
3. Paul Reiser is dead.
If you fell for this 2008 Wikipedia hoax, well -- let's just say I'm
not so mad about you.
4. Sinbad is dead.
Couldn't tell ya what he's actually doing these days, but contrary to
a 2007 Wikipedia claim, Sinbad is still around.
5. Sergey Brin is sexy, dating Jimmy Wales and dead.
The Google god's Wikipedia page has seen more changes than his company
has seen betas. Remarks on Sergey Brin's bio have claimed he's gay and
dating Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales; he's dead, having ended his life
in Moscow; and he's "sexy."
(I'll leave the judgment on the last one up to you.)
6. Tony Blair worships Hitler.
The former British prime minister was a regular target for Wikipedia
tampering. That's what we read on Wikipedia, anyway.
7. The Duchess of Cornwall's Christian name is Cow-miller.
Anyone else suddenly have a hankering for a hamburger?
8. The University of Cincinnati's former president is a whore.
Former University of Cincinnati President Nancy Zimpher was listed as
a "prostitute" and a "witch" on her Wikipedia page. Good thing it
wasn't true, as that would make for one dangerous combination.
9. Robert Byrd is dead.
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., was pronounced dead by Wikipedia in
January. The senator was resurrected by a Wikipedia correction a short
time later.
10. Ted Kennedy died in January.
Months before the news that Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., had passed
away, his Wikipedia page reported his death. The entry said Kennedy
had died after his seizure at January's presidential inauguration.
11. John Seigenthaler helped assassinate John and Robert Kennedy.
The retired journalist wrote a full editorial about his Wikipedia
ordeal, in which he was accused of being somehow involved in the
assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy. The errant info,
Seigenthaler says, was on the site for four and a half months.
12. A yacht killed British TV presenter Vernon Kay.
That's a rough way to go. Especially when it never happened.
13. Conan O'Brien assaults sea turtles while canoeing.
Stephen Colbert was to blame for this hoax. I can't decide which is
more unbelievable: that Conan assaulted a sea turtle, or that he went
canoeing.
14. British TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh published a new version of the
Kama Sutra.
He did, however, slap stickers on a bikini model for ratings.
15. Sienna Miller has modeled nude.
I don't care if it's not true -- I'm still going to require proof on
this one.
Just zis Guy, you know?
<smar...@aol.com> wrote:
>WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY
Correct. But we do banninate mission posters and zealots, including
(I'm guessing) you. That has an overall positive effect on quality.
Incidentally, paedophile activism is probably your quickest route to
instant banning.
For the rest, well, everyone knows that Wikipedia is subject to
vandalism sometimes. People spray graffiti on the walls of buildings,
that doesn't mean we should stop building walls, it just gives someone
a cleanup job to do. The average life of vandalism on a Wikipedia
article has been measured in seconds to minutes, the higher profile
the article the shorter the lifetime.
Bob Ferguson
"Just zis Guy, you know?" <guy.c...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:i971b5pqdb2198qga...@4ax.com...
-----------
That may be the case for the more obvious mischievous editing, but there is
much on wikipedia that is either heavily biased or just plain wrong. Some
of the later may be the result of editing in good faith, but some articles
are heavily overseen by those with an agenda. The most obvious examples are
those articles with an environmental theme. These are carefully watched by
environmentalist editors to ensure that the remain 'on message' and contain
only the plus point and none of the minus points.
There are other articles that are contributed to in good faith citing other
internet sites that are less authoritative than wikipedia isn't.
Liz Bonn - I'm from Portugal
"Just zis Guy, you know?" <guy.c...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:i971b5pqdb2198qga...@4ax.com...
> The average life of vandalism on a Wikipedia
> article has been measured in seconds to minutes, the higher profile
> the article the shorter the lifetime.
Try adding anything factual (i.e that will cause discomfiture) to the Winter
Of Discontent page and it will be removed quicker than Usain Bolt can run
100m.
How do these people know? Can you flag pages and be alerted when they're
changed?
And why remove factual evidence? Surely that's what Wikipedia is supposed
to be about?
Just zis Guy, you know?
<robert....@google.co.uk> wrote:
>That may be the case for the more obvious mischievous editing, but there is
>much on wikipedia that is either heavily biased or just plain wrong.
{{sofixit}}, as we say :-)
Nobody denies it, by the way, but the main problem is obsessives
pursuing causes, and yes it often takes a year or more to get rid of
them - paedo activists are one of the very few classes who get a
shortcut to the ejector seat, which is why the OP's agenda against
Wikipedia is so obviously based on his own failure to get biased
material in. I manned the email queues for some time, I know this is
one that generates furious complaints that are dealt with swiftly and
with virtually no pushback.
>Some
>of the later may be the result of editing in good faith, but some articles
>are heavily overseen by those with an agenda. The most obvious examples are
>those articles with an environmental theme. These are carefully watched by
>environmentalist editors to ensure that the remain 'on message' and contain
>only the plus point and none of the minus points.
Or are you perceiving your own biases as neutrality?
There is a near-total consensus of the scientific community behind
global climate change, with minor disagreements at the fringes and
around some elements. Some people take these minor disagreements and
use them to assert that the consensus does not exist, that climate
change is somehow a scientific controversy. It isn't. There are
practically no scientists active in the field who do not accept
anthropogenic climate change. We've seen precisely the same "teach
the controversy" approach from fundamentalist Christians in the
southern US who want to undermine the articles on evolution. Yes, the
project pushes back against that. Yes, we recognise that we have a
systemic policy bias in favour of a liberal and scientific view of the
world, and there are a lot of users who try to push that back the
other way by giving undue weight to pseudoscience (e.g. homeopathy).
It's a work in progress, nobody has ever pretended otherwise, least of
all Jimbo. But hey, it's quite impressive, isn't it?
>There are other articles that are contributed to in good faith citing other
>internet sites that are less authoritative than wikipedia isn't.
Yup, we know. And we fix them as we find them, but more volunteers
are always welcome. The tags you need are {{refimprove}} and
{{dubious}} :-)
Just zis Guy, you know?
<postm...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>Try adding anything factual (i.e that will cause discomfiture) to the Winter
>Of Discontent page and it will be removed quicker than Usain Bolt can run
>100m.
What do you mean by factual? An example would be good - preferably a
diff link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DIFF). Post it on
my talk page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG) if you like.
>How do these people know? Can you flag pages and be alerted when they're
>changed?
It's called the watchlist. You get one when you register an account,
and you can opt for pages you edit to be added automatically, or you
can add them manually with the "Watch" link at the top of the page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist is the place.
>And why remove factual evidence? Surely that's what Wikipedia is supposed
>to be about?
Compare and contrast:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Truth
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Truth
I suspect that if you are smart this will tell you what you need to
know :-)
Bob Ferguson
-----------------
Not correct. The near concensus is only claimed. Indeed the original
report that was published on the connection of greenhouse gas emissions and
global warming was signed up to by 12 "eminent scientists". Except it
turned out that of 8 of them, there was no record of them holding the
claimed qualifications (and it also turned out that they were regular
members of 'Friends of the Earth' - a group as misnamed as the 'Socialist
Workers Party'). The remaining 4 were indeed eminent scentists, but the
first they heard of the report was when it was published (one even went to
court to have his name removed).
Most of the real experts on the subject held a conference in Manhatten in
2008 and subsequently published the 'Manhatten Declaration' declining their
support for the rubbish spouted. It has long been proven that it is global
warming that is driving CO2 levels in the atmosphere, not the other way
around (with a lag of about 80 years). Global temperature changes have been
going on for millions of years they are nothing new. Even the current
temperature rises have been shown to have been going on for over 800 years,
long before the industrial revolution which the environmentalists claim is
where it started. The government has only gone along with it because it
provides source of tax revenue.
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=1
Your style of writing and the use of the first person clearly shows that you
are an environmentalist. When the environmentalists stop persuing political
agenda and start focussing on proper solutions to real environmental
problems, the planet may stand a chance.
On wikipedia it has long been shown that negative material that has good
provenance has been included in a wikipedia article only to be deleted by
one of the well known environmentalists watching the article (often within a
few minutes). Such behaviour is considered vandalism under wikipedias
rules.
Bob Ferguson
"Liz Bonn - I'm from Portugal" <postm...@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:Zq9sm.79840$OO7....@text.news.virginmedia.com...
>
> "Just zis Guy, you know?" <guy.c...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
> news:i971b5pqdb2198qga...@4ax.com...
>
>> The average life of vandalism on a Wikipedia
>> article has been measured in seconds to minutes, the higher profile
>> the article the shorter the lifetime.
>
> Try adding anything factual (i.e that will cause discomfiture) to the
> Winter Of Discontent page and it will be removed quicker than Usain Bolt
> can run 100m.
>
> How do these people know? Can you flag pages and be alerted when they're
> changed?
>
Actually yes you can. It requires a third party script which can report
when the last edit date of a page changes. This can be used to flag when a
watched page is changed and permits the person running the script to vet the
change and delete it if they disagree with it (often within minutes).
> And why remove factual evidence? Surely that's what Wikipedia is supposed
> to be about?
>
Indeed it is, but there are political agenda at work here and wikipedia has
turned out to be an easily controllable vehicle for environmentalist
propaganda.
The discussion pages are always a clear indicator of what the
environmentalists are doing. Someone described environmentalism as being
like a religion where you are expected to accept the dictats as handed down,
and discussion or questioning of those dictats is discouraged or
(preferably) stiffled. Discussions often get going on the discussion pages
of wikipedia which the environmentalists (who always appear to be quoting
from a standard manual of 'claims to answer critics') nearly alway lose.
But the standard response once a discussion is lost is to selectively edit
the responses to leave a discussion where the environmentalists appear to
have won or failing that they will delete the entire discussion.
Two examples (both on the talk page of the pointless Compact Fluorescent
Lamps - probably one of the environmentalists worst ever policies).
Paraphrased (and probably shortened), because the discussions have long
gone. The "contributor" is not always the same person.
1. Someone started a discussion on the mercury content.
Environmentalist stock response: The lamps contain only an insignificant
amount of mercury.
Contributor: Atually an amount so large that the ROHS legislation would have
made the sale of them illegal if it wasn't for an insistence that CFLs were
specifically exempted.
Environmentalist stock response: Any mercury that the lamp contains will be
recovered when the lamp is recycled.
Contributor: There is in fact no recycling facility anywhere on the planet,
and there never will be. It is totally uneconomic to recover the mercury
from the lamps. If the price of the lamps included the recycling costs, no
one would buy them.
Environmentalist stock response: The mercury released by burning the coal
required to produce the extra energy required to light a filament bulb is
far greater than the mercury contained in the CFL.
Contributor: That would assume that all the world's electricity is obtained
by burning coal when in reality only a fraction of it is. Also any mercury
released from burning coal is evenly distributed over the plane courtesy of
winds elc. The mercury contained in CFLs is all concentrated in landfill
sites where 1 million disposed lamps deposits around 5kg of mercury. If
anyone dumped 5kg of mercury in a landfill, the envoronmentalists would be
the first to declare an environmental disaster.
The response to this last point was that the last contribution was removed
along with the contribution about the lack of recycling making the argument
about mercury released from coal the last word.
2. Someone posted a claim that the lamps were only 35% as bright - they had
measured it.
Environmentalist stock response: The lamps are as bright as their equivalent
filament lamp. The previous contributor's response is clearly faulty in
some way.
Contributor: Not the case. Nearly everyone comments on how much dimmer they
are.
Environmentalist stock response: Whilst the CFL is slightly dimmer, you are
unlikely to notice the difference.
Contributor: Anyone who fails to notice the difference should see an
optician pronto.
Contributor: Has just measured the difference in light output using a near
sphere to integrate the light [he actually stated that he had knocked up an
icosohedron as it was much easier to fabricate out of white card]. Measured
the light outout of a 20watt CFL as 34% of that of a 100w filament. [That
appeared to me to be low but it was uncomfortably close to the contributor
that started the thread.]
Environmentalist stock response: Clearly, the measurement is faulty in some
way. The fact that the measuremt was made not using a sphere has introduced
substantial error and the meaurement is totally invalid. [except that the
same errors apply to both lamps]. Also the spectral response of the sensor
will introduce even greater errors.
New Contributor: Claimed to be a lighting designer and that it was well
known in that trade that you had to multiply the quoted Lumens (actually the
"Design Light Output") by the efficiency of the chosen phosphor. Sinc the
efficiency of the phosphor used in general lighting CFLs has taken to have
an efficiency of 0.4, this makes a 20w CFL have a lumen output of 480 which
is 36% that of a 1300 Lumen 100w filament lamp. [Which is remarkably close
to the previous 2 claimed measurements]
Environmentalist response: Clearly the previous contributor doesn't know
what he is talking about because no one has claimed that the CFL lamps are
*that* much dimmer. They accepted that they were slightly dimmer but that
is all.
Another New Contributor: Claimed to be a lecturer in lighting technology at
[IIRC] Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Claimed that the previous
contributor was entirely correct and that different phosphors had different
efficiencies. Included a table of the efficiencies of various phosphors and
even cited the work from where they were reproduced (noting that the
manufacturers don't publish this information). Also pointed out that the
eye's response to brightness is logarithmic and that a lamp 36% as bright as
another would appear to be around three quarters as bright. Went on to
point out that it would need to be 18% as bright to actually appear to the
eye as half as bright. Observed that photographers use an 18% grey card as
a mid grey from which the measure their exposure. [which they do]
20 minutes later, this entire discussion had been deleted.
This sort of censoring of information says more about environmentalists than
I ever could.
Bob Ferguson
>Try adding anything factual (i.e that will cause discomfiture) to the
>Winter
>Of Discontent page and it will be removed quicker than Usain Bolt can run
>100m.
What do you mean by factual? An example would be good - preferably a
diff link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DIFF). Post it on
my talk page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG) if you like.
>How do these people know? Can you flag pages and be alerted when they're
>changed?
It's called the watchlist. You get one when you register an account,
and you can opt for pages you edit to be added automatically, or you
can add them manually with the "Watch" link at the top of the page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist is the place.
-----------
This allows you to watch articles, but you do have to specifically call up
the page.
There are techniques (as I posted) that you can arrange for you to be
notified when a page changes, but not through wikipeadia.
AndyW
news:4ab1ff90$1...@glkas0286.greenlnk.net...
> Environmentalist stock response: Whilst the CFL is slightly dimmer, you
> are unlikely to notice the difference.
>
> Contributor: Anyone who fails to notice the difference should see an
> optician pronto.
At the risk of pouring fuel on a fire.
I have quite a few 'energy saving light bulbs' in my house and they fall
into two very distinct types. I have instant-on very bright bulbs that a
coiled in such a way as to fit into the space envelope of a standard bulb
and I have slow start, dim (but not supposed to be) long bulbe coiled as to
look like a four on a die in section.
I have no idea why they are so different but as the long ones are burning
out (which is fairly often) I am replacing them with the coiled ones (which
have yet to burn out).
Andy
onearm
> more volunteers are always welcome.
Lies.
Bob Ferguson
"onearm" <one...@example.com> wrote in message
news:3oVsm.321068$bU2.1...@newsfe29.ams2...
> On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:23:56 +0100, Bob Ferguson wrote:
>
>> more volunteers are always welcome.
>
No I didn't.