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_ News Worth Discussing _ Stephen Colbert Causes Chaos on Wikipedia

Posted by: Newsvine

On Monday night's episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert addressed the online resource Wikipedia, that anyone can read or edit. Colbert praised Wikipedia for "wikiality" the reality that exists if you make something up and enough people agree with you, it becomes reality.



http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site

Posted by: Yahoo! News

Blog: Late-night TV personality Stephen Colbert claims he has no qualms with Wikipedia. "I love Wikipedia," he said during the July...

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=12gaf46qr/*http%3A//news.com.com/2061-10802_3-6100754.html?part=rss&tag=6100754&subj=news

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

QUOTE(Newsvine @ Tue 1st August 2006, 3:46am) *

On Monday night's episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert addressed the online resource Wikipedia, that anyone can read or edit. Colbert praised Wikipedia for "wikiality" the reality that exists if you make something up and enough people agree with you, it becomes reality.



http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site


QUOTE
In the segment, 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 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 goes on to declare that he doesn't believe George Washington had slaves.

"If I want to say he didn't that's my right, and now, thanks to Wikipedia *taps keyboard* it's also a fact."

Here's the fun part - Colbert actually did this. The Wikipedia articles on his show and George Washington were both edited by the user Stephencolbert to reflect the changes he declared on air as he tapped at his computer around 23:35 UTC - which is 6:35pm on the East Coast, during the taping hours before the show aired.

It gets better.

Colbert then urged his audience to find the Wikipedia entry on elephants and create an entry that stated their population had tripled in the last six months, a fact he freely stated to not know if it was "actually true," with his sidebar stating "it isn't." Guess what happened next?

Scores of internet users took Colbert's bait, repeatedly vandalizing approximately 20 articles related to elephants proclaiming the jump in their population over the last six months. Try looking up any article about elephants and you will find the article under a lock due to repeated vandalism, er uh, wikiality.

The brouhaha caught the eye of one Wikipedia administrator, Tawker, and his program to automatically spot vandalism on the site, reportedly eating up "too much" of his bandwith in the process. Tawker subsequently blocked Colbert's Wikipedia account to 'verify the identity' of Mr. Colbert. Tawker, unlike myself, must be incapable of telling time, as the logs corroborate Colbert's mischief. His notes on the block and blog entry, however, reveal he just wants to be mentioned or flown out to the show.

All this trouble over a man who, as his user page noted, is a 'defender of truth.'


smile.gif

Posted by: Google News


http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060801-7396.html&cid=0&ei=GIvPRMmGK4WuoQKVlqiSAg
Ars Technica, MA - 47 minutes ago
If you needed any further proof that Wikipedia has "arrived," it came this week as both The Onion and The Colbert Report satirized the online encyclopedia. ...

Posted by: Yahoo! News

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia now provides fodder for late-night comedy shows and satirical newspapers. Is this a reflection on its (in)accuracy or its popularity?

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=12hi92c10/*http%3A//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~3/8112072/20060801-7396.html

Posted by: Yahoo! News

Don’t believe the hype: Despite what wisenheimer Stephen Colbert would have you believe, the population of African elephants has in fact not tripled.

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=136iaph84/*http%3A//www.canada.com/topics/technology/story.html?id=d6573502-1320-4037-82a1-05f5efc4064b&k=82202

Posted by: Google News


http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://www.powerpage.org/archives/2006/08/stephen_colbert_v_wikipedia.html&cid=0&ei=6y3QRK7QLofyoQKPxriSAg
O'Grady's Power Page, PA - 1 hour ago
Stephen Colbert did a segment on his show about how easy it is to edit Wikipedia. Not being able to resist, I checked out the Wikipedia ...

Posted by: Google News


http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060802WikipediaCantHandletheTruthiness.html&cid=0&ei=Dt3QRL6eMofOpwLJ58GVAg
WebProNews, KY - 12 minutes ago
Wikipedia got a painful dose of "wikiality" this week as the online encyclopedia's greatest strength became its worst nightmare. ...

Posted by: Yahoo! News

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

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=12633764m/*http%3A//rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/8556890/article.pl

Posted by: Yahoo! News

Stephen Colbert vs. Wikipedia Snarky television pundit Stephen Colbert rewrites history aim with the help of giant web encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=12fq782uj/*http%3A//www.spin.com/features/everybodystalkingabout/2006/08/060802_colbert/

Posted by: Yahoo! News

The father of truthiness, Stephen Colbert, has been blocked from being able to edit entries at Wikipedia. It seems that the gag he pulled on Monday night's edition of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report - when he edited the Wiki...

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=12hc9r08b/*http%3A//rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/TP-OnDeadline/~3/8893273/wikipedia_to_co.html

Posted by: Yahoo! News

From Newsvine

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=127lbulq4/*http%3A//www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=2272cd99854bfc51e12854ca3a488ef7

Posted by: Yahoo! News

Blog: In the wake of "Colbert Report" host Stephen Colbert waxing philosophical about Wikipedia, making changes to entries on the air...

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=12gsil055/*http%3A//news.com.com/2061-10802_3-6102088.html?part=rss&tag=6102088&subj=news

Posted by: Yahoo! News

The online encyclopedia saw a spike of inaccurate entries after the TV host urged "Colbert Report" viewers to edit the entry on elephants to bring "democracy to knowledge." And now, user StephenColbert has been banned from the site.

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=13f3v5144/*http%3A//www.mtv.com/news/articles/1537865/20060803/index.jhtml?headlines=true&rsspartner=rssYahooNewscrawler

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE
Blog: In the wake of "Colbert Report" host Stephen Colbert waxing philosophical about Wikipedia, making changes to entries on the air...

Odd that this blogger didn't mention that the resulting vandalism was referred to soon after as an "http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-August/051690.html." Maybe he just forgot?

Posted by: Yahoo! News

The Colbert Report’s Stephen Colbert caused havoc this week on the Internet’s Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can read or edit. In a segment on his show, Colbert tapped into the resource and edited an article on George Washington to say that the first president did not own slaves.

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/wikipedia/SIG=130n0q3bn/*http%3A//www.dispatch.com/flipside/flipside.php?story=dispatch/2006/08/04/20060804-F10-08.html

Posted by: Google News


http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer%3Fpagename%3Dthestar/Layout/Article_Type1%26c%3DArticle%26cid%3D1154952611287%26call_pageid%3D991479973472%26col%3D991929131147&cid=0&ei=TybYROTpI5L2oAKwjNHVBQ
Toronto Star, Canada - 14 minutes ago
In his ongoing attempt to lob satire at inanity, comedian Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's Colbert Report has pranked Wikipedia and its consensus-driven ...

Posted by: blissyu2

I love "the Daily Show". I have never seen "The Colbert Report" but it is referenced from the daily show, and sounds just as good. Wikipedia needs to be made fun of, I think.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Hey, welcome back, Blissyu2. There was another satire of Wikipedia, perhaps more heavy-handed, that turned up on the RSS feeds: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902 from The Onion. And behold! In the course of googling to find it, I happened upon this new gem: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/37314 which might even be seen, in a certain light, as a satire on the Wikipedia Review, written by a guy that looks as if he could be related to Snowspinner. Enjoy.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Newsvine @ Tue 1st August 2006, 3:46am) *

On Monday night's episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert addressed the online resource Wikipedia, that anyone can read or edit. Colbert praised Wikipedia for "wikiality" the reality that exists if you make something up and enough people agree with you, it becomes reality.



http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site

To revive a necrothread, Stephen Colbert is still banned from Wikipedia. But the topic is still worth discussing for several reasons, not least of which is that it demonstrates WMF's uncanny ablity to lie by misdirection rather than by actual provable perjury, as though the entire foundation was a lawyer. smile.gif

To recap, Stephen Colbert said during the taping of his show that he was making a few edits to Wikipedia. During the time the show was taped (NOT later when it was aired) two edits of the exact nature Colber described did show up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Stephencolbert

One of them changes a theme on Colbert's own show, changing the idea that Washington is Oregon's Canada, to the even more shocking idea that "Oregon is Idaho's Portugal."

The other edit is a claim that George Washington didn't own slaves. tongue.gif

Following the airing of the show the "user:Stephencolbert" account was indef blocked and Jimbo made some comments about messing with Wikipedia (though admiting later he had no idea what had happened factually, but had given the interview anyway). Then, a very long discussion on the user:TALK page about whether or not Colbert should be bitten as a newbie, or even if we could be sure the user was Colbert. The alternative being that somebody VERY alert in the studio audience had a laptop, was logged into Wikipedia, and was prepared to perfectly mimic Colbert's edits at the time of taping, even without being informed what pages they were being made to. Ahem. Not too likely.

Colbert later made some comments about Wikiality and changing the universe just by editing Wikipedia, which evidentally were not well received at WMF. They resulted in all but the above two edits being NUKED. Including the edits which created the user:Stephencolbert userpage and all the rest. Gone.

A long debate on this survives in the the TALK page history, but only as history, as it has all been erased. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Stephencolbert&oldid=86225157

What you see now is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stephencolbert which claims that the user:Stephencolbert is only blocked for impersonating Stephen Colbert, NOT because WP can't take a joke. Alas, this is probably not exactly acurate. The block log shows that admin TAWKER tried to contact the show and had actually unblocked the account, pending action. Then user:AmiDaniel moves in two days later and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Stephencolbert with the block summary: Per decision of Wales after contacting Colbert's staff. Leave this account alone.

But you will NOT see that if you go to look at the user:TALK page. It's a decision of Wales, overriding an admin who was not only willing to unblock, but had already unblocked.

Now: the lie by misdirection. AmiDaniel allows the template to continue to state: "Until the blocking administrator (Tawker) receives word from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central that this is Mr. Colbert, this account will remain blocked." When in fact, this is wrong. Wales has contacted Colbert's staff at Comedy central and directed the overriding of Tawker's unblock, for reasons unstated. Thus, the template is a deliberate lie, as it was allowed to stand when all knew it was incorrect.

Truthiness!

The only other thing worth reading in this sordid affair is a (now erased but still archived) bit of doggeral by user:Porphyric Hemophiliac to user:Alecmconroy:

QUOTE

We would not block him in the rain, we would not block him on a train.
We would not block him in a (user)box, we would not block him with a (fire)fox.
We would not block him on a LAN, we would not block him or give a ban.
We would not block him here or there, we would not block him anywhere.
We blocked not for his jokes or fame, we blocked for WP:USERNAME.
We would not block him, Oh, AHOY! We would not block him, Alecmconroy!!!

~ Porphyric Hemophiliac § 01:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


I'm always amazed at the tiny brains of people actually making decisions on Wikipedia, when they have a pool of talent which remains completely unused. But I suppose chaos would ensue if they actually listened to their more intelligent detractors, wouldn't it? hmmm.gif

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Sat 16th May 2009, 6:32pm) *
Colbert later made some comments about Wikiality and changing the universe just by editing Wikipedia, which evidentally were not well received at WMF. They resulted in all but the above two edits being NUKED. Including the edits which created the user:StephenColbert userpage and all the rest. Gone.

My guess is that at the time, they were hoping he wouldn't have any staying power on Comedy Central. At this point it's clear that he does have that, of course... As I recall, they were also upset about his calling on viewers to edit the WP "Elephants" article so as to misrepresent their population numbers, which was considered "disruptive." (OH NOES!) However, that should have been a simple matter of protecting the article for a few days.

So yes, disappearing these edits is more of an embarrassment to WP than anything else, but only if we assume there's some legitimate historical importance to the events in question.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Somey @ Sat 16th May 2009, 11:36pm) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Sat 16th May 2009, 6:32pm) *
Colbert later made some comments about Wikiality and changing the universe just by editing Wikipedia, which evidentally were not well received at WMF. They resulted in all but the above two edits being NUKED. Including the edits which created the user:StephenColbert userpage and all the rest. Gone.

My guess is that at the time, they were hoping he wouldn't have any staying power on Comedy Central. At this point it's clear that he does have that, of course... As I recall, they were also upset about his calling on viewers to edit the WP "Elephants" article so as to misrepresent their population numbers, which was considered "disruptive." (OH NOES!) However, that should have been a simple matter of protecting the article for a few days.

So yes, disappearing these edits is more of an embarrassment to WP than anything else, but only if we assume there's some legitimate historical importance to the events in question.

Disappearing the edits amounts to oversighting them. Why oversight the edit that somebody (some newbie, whether it was or wasn't Colbert, are we not agreed?) used to create their own userpage?? This is completely beyond the pale, and there's nothing even remotely in any WP policy which explains or justifies this. Or the indef block, either. (Where's the warning to the newbie about his unacceptable username, eh?) So do we have any WP admins on WR who want to explain to me how this went down, per WP guidelines?

So this is just one more example of how WP doesn't follow its own policies.

My own guess is that Wales actually DID call up the Colbert show, and tried to pull an Alpha Dog of the Week on them. Probably asked or demanded to be on the show. Or threatened them. And Colbert or his people told Jimbo to piss up a rope. So the word went from Jimbo to his admin lackey of the week, who I suppose was AmiDaniel (do we have a subforum for him?) and somebody with Nukepower (surely a limited list of 'crats) nuked newbie user:Stephencolbert's first bunch of edits. Except for those two. And then indef blocked him, no appeal.

WP:BITE. We'll show you who's alpha dog. evilgrin.gif mad.gif

Posted by: Cedric

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Sun 17th May 2009, 2:06am) *

My own guess is that Wales actually DID call up the Colbert show, and tried to pull an Alpha Dog of the Week on them. Probably asked or demanded to be on the show. Or threatened them. And Colbert or his people told Jimbo to piss up a rope. So the word went from Jimbo to his admin lackey of the week, who I suppose was AmiDaniel (do we have a subforum for him?) and somebody with Nukepower (surely a limited list of 'crats) nuked newbie user:Stephencolbert's first bunch of edits. Except for those two. And then indef blocked him, no appeal.

WP:BITE. We'll show you who's alpha dog. evilgrin.gif mad.gif

Actually, Jimbo http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/87528/may-24-2007/jimmy-wales, but it was nearly a year after "the tripling elephants controversy" and Colbert's original block.

Posted by: danielaword

QUOTE(Newsvine @ Tue 1st August 2006, 10:46am) *

On Monday night's episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert addressed the online resource Wikipedia, that anyone can read or edit. Colbert praised Wikipedia for "wikiality" the reality that exists if you make something up and enough people agree with you, it becomes reality.



http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site

: THANX COLBERT, KEEP UP THE GOOD JOB! WILL SEND U ADDITIONAL INFO! biggrin.gif

Posted by: thekohser

Mods, why is this story "pinned" in the folder?