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 Stephen Colbert Causes Chaos on Wikipedia, And, predictably, gets banned for it |
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| Herschelkrustofsky |
 Tue 1st August 2006, 3:01pm
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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/2006/08/0...ocked-from-siteQUOTE 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.'  This post has been edited by Herschelkrustofsky: Tue 1st August 2006, 3:02pm |
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Wikipedia mocked by Stephen Colbert, The OnionArs Technica, MA - 47 minutes agoIf 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. ...
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Stephen Colbert v. WikipediaO'Grady's Power Page, PA - 1 hour agoStephen 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 ...
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Wikipedia Can't Handle The TruthinessWebProNews, KY - 12 minutes agoWikipedia got a painful dose of "wikiality" this week as the online encyclopedia's greatest strength became its worst nightmare. ...
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Wikipedia handles ColbertToronto Star, Canada - 14 minutes agoIn his ongoing attempt to lob satire at inanity, comedian Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's Colbert Report has pranked Wikipedia and its consensus-driven ...
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| Herschelkrustofsky |
Mon 23rd October 2006, 2:27am
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Hey, welcome back, Blissyu2. There was another satire of Wikipedia, perhaps more heavy-handed, that turned up on the RSS feeds: Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence, from The Onion. And behold! In the course of googling to find it, I happened upon this new gem: I Must Take Issue With The Wikipedia Entry For 'Weird Al' Yankovic, 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. |
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| Milton Roe |
Sat 16th May 2009, 11:32pm
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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/2006/08/0...ocked-from-siteTo 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. 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.../StephencolbertOne 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.  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=86225157What 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: 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?  |
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