Student's Wikipedia hoax quote used worldwide in newspaper obituaries--Irish Times Options Rating

[EricBarbour]

A WIKIPEDIA hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world.

I didn't see it in the Newsfeed. Anyone know more?

[Somey]

Here's the discussion thread on Slashdot. There are some halfway-decent ideas in there, actually, though I'm afraid none of them are coming from the pro-WP crowd, who once again can only manage the usual just-not-getting-it references to "the Nature study," and the standard self-righteous blathering about how "people should just stop vandalizing our website."

I realize Slashdot has one of the biggest user bases of any news/discussion forum on the internet, and I'm also biased... but it just seems to me that when WP-related issues appear on Slashdot, user support is always reflective of the tone and purpose of the original thread-starter. So if someone posts a new story about something embarrassing to WP, people pile on to attack WP, and if someone posts something positive about WP, people pile on to defend WP, usually by attacking its detractors.

Sometimes you see that with stories about Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun/Java, too (and I believe the latter two have now merged, btw). Maybe it's something about the way Slashdot is set up... I've never looked all that closely at their mod-points system, to be honest.

[Peter Damian]

Here's the discussion thread on Slashdot. There are some halfway-decent ideas in there, actually, though I'm afraid none of them are coming from the pro-WP crowd, who once again can only manage the usual just-not-getting-it references to "the Nature study," and the standard self-righteous blathering about how "people should just stop vandalizing our website."

Eh? But then when you point out the problem with a reference work 'anyone can edit' they tell you there are no problems.