Stephen Colbert Causes Chaos on Wikipedia, And, predictably, gets banned for it Options

[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/2006/08/0...ocked-from-site

[Milton Roe]

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/2006/08/0...ocked-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. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/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:Contr.../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. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/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=...&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 indef blocks 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:

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? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif)

[Somey]

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.