Stephen Colbert Wikipedia Prank Backfires

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 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 disregard 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 then called on users to go to the site and falsify the entry on elephants. But Wikipedia's volunteer administrators were among those watching Colbert, and they responded swiftly to correct the entry, block further mischievous editing, and ban user StephenColbert from the website."

Comments

Always Hilarious

[telbij]

The Colbert report is always hilarious, and this is no exception.

Re:Always Hilarious

[mozumder]

Unfortunately, he did get the idea from last week's Onion: "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence"

Re:Always Hilarious

[TheGreek]

The works of "C.P.E. Bach" would not be funny in the least if Peter Schickele wasn't a devotee of both orchestral music and the intellectual culture which surrounds it.

I think you mean "P. D. Q. Bach." C. P. E. Bach was a real composer.

He's not banned

[ThePolkapunk]

Take a look at Colbert's block log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special: Log&type=block&page=User:Stephencolbert and his talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stephencolb ert. He's not banned, and although he was blocked at one point, that's since been removed.

Furthermore, all the blocks put on his account were due to the inability to confirm that this account actually belonged to Stephen Colbert since creating an account with a public figure's name if you are not the public figure is against wikipedia policy. His account was not blocked for vandalism.

Re:Backfires?

[Ignorant Aardvark]

So what if a few pages displayed vandalized entries for a little while? Two nights ago we were on such high alert that the Stephen Colbert vandalism was reverted on average in under 30 seconds. And that was before I started locking down pages. Considering the vandalism was spurred on by a television show with an audience of over one million people, it only took about half a dozen admins to quelch all of the vandalism.

Re:This is why...

[�berhund]

Thanks! I thought that sounded familiar. :-)

"In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."

The Six Sins of the Wikipedia

[saha]

Agreed. Its a starting point for me for looking quick technical things. e.g. DVI pin layouts or lookup SHA or MD5 hash. When it comes to areas where one's opinion/politics/theology can be inserted I take Wikipedia more with a grain of salt.

Sam Vaknin had an interesting article The Six Sins of the Wikipedia pointing out the problems with the Wikipedia system. I enjoy using Wikipedia but I am wary of using it has some sort of gospel or authority. The contributers are anonymous and that lack of transparency does make it sort of a problem for me. Below the article.

Sam Vaknin July 2, 2006

It is a question of time before the Wikipedia self-destructs and implodes. It poses such low barriers to entry (anyone can edit any number of its articles) that it is already attracting masses of teenagers as "contributors" and "editors", not to mention the less savory flotsam and jetsam of cyber-life. People who are regularly excluded or at least moderated in every other Internet community are welcomed, no questions asked, by this wannabe self-styled "encyclopedia"

Six cardinal (and, in the long-term, deadly) sins plague this online venture. What unites and underlies all its deficiencies is simple: Wikipedia dissembles about what it is and how it operates. It is a self-righteous confabulation and its success in deceiving the many attests not only to the gullibility of the vast majority of Netizens but to the PR savvy of its sleek and slick operators.

1. The Wikipedia is opaque and encourages recklessness

The overwhelming majority of contributors to and editors of the Wikipedia remain anonymous throughout the process. Anyone can register and members' screen-names (handles) mean nothing and lead nowhere. Thus, no one is forced to take responsibility for what he or she adds to the "encyclopedia" or subtracts from it. This amounts to an impenetrable smokescreen: identities can rarely be established and evading the legal consequences of one's actions or omissions is easy.

Everything in the Wikipedia can be and frequently is edited, re-written and erased and this includes the talk pages and even, to my utter amazement, the history pages! In other words, one cannot gain an impartial view of the editorial process by sifting through the talk and history pages of articles (most of which are typically monopolized by fiercely territorial "editors"). History, not unlike in certain authoritarian regimes, is being constantly re-jigged on the Wikipedia!

2. The Wikipedia is anarchic, not democratic

The Wikipedia is not an experiment in online democracy, but a form of pernicious anarchy. It espouses two misconceptions: (a) That chaos can and does lead to the generation of artifacts with lasting value and (b) That knowledge is an emergent, mass phenomenon. But The Wikipedia is not conducive to the unfettered exchange of information and opinion that is a prerequisite to both (a) and (b). It is a war zone where many fear to tread. the Wikipedia is a negative filter (see the next point).

3. The Might is Right Editorial Principle

Lacking quality control by design, the Wikipedia rewards quantity. The more one posts and interacts with others, the higher one's status, both informal and official. In the Wikipedia planet, authority is a function of the number of edits, no matter how frivolous. The more aggressive (even violent) a member is; the more prone to flame, bully, and harass; the more inclined to form coalitions with like-minded trolls; the less of a life he or she has outside the Wikipedia, the more they are likely to end up being administrators.

The result is erratic editing. Many entries are completely re-written (not to say vandalized) with the arrival of new kids on the Wikipedia block. Contrary to advertently-fostered impressions, the Wikipedia is not a cumulative process. Its text goes through dizzyingly rapid and oft-repeated cycles of destruction

Re:Doesn't Refute His Point

[Ignorant Aardvark]

You may be misunderstanding how Wikipedia works ...

Even if 1,000 skinheads do get together and try to "vote" to change the article on The Holocaust, it won't do anything. We'd simply protect the article and block the lot of them. Wikipedia is not a democracy (this is actually one of our policies), and we administrators have lots of discretion to simply get rid of obviously false or stupid entries. Go check out our articles on Evolution or Global warming; I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

There's this misconception out there that if you get enough people to come edit you can make Wikipedia say anything you want by the sheer sake of having numbers on your side. This is simply not true.

Re:Resisting Vandalism?

[Ignorant Aardvark]

What you are describing is the stable versions proposal, and it's currently being worked on by the developers. Basically, an administrator would be able to go in and flag a specific revision as being "stable", and that's what all readers of the article would see. You could of course choose to see the development version or make edits to the development version, but it will take an administrator to update the stable version, and he will do so by comparing the changes since the last stable version and making sure everything is legitimate.

Re:Wiki works, but it shouldn't be the only 'Sourc

[Ryan Amos]

Ehh undergrad papers are largely a joke anyway. The only person reading them is the person grading them, so the only person they're hurting is themselves.

Wikipedia is a bad resource for a number of reasons, the least of which being its somewhat dubious provenance: it is never a primary source, at best a secondary source, and most often a tertiary source, neither of which are incredibly accurate or paint a very good picture of ths subject.

Wikipedia can be a good resource for beginning your research, however. If the article is any good, it will document its sources, which you can then look up and use yourself. The source material usually has more information than is posted on Wikipedia, which might also be useful to your topic.

Re:How to fight vandalism

[Ignorant Aardvark]

point is, Colbert's point in fact, isn't that you guys can't fix the stuff you're looking for, it's that you can't fix the stuff you're NOT looking for. If he had chosen to not go on the air with his joke, then "wikiality" would actually show that his opinion has always been that Oregon is Idaho's Portugal (not Washington's Mexico, or California's Canada, both of which he actually said). No one would have noticed, but it would be up there as "wikifact" anyway.

Actually, his insertions of false material into those articles were both noticed and reverted quickly, one in under three minutes and the other in under seven minutes. This was still long before the show went live, and thus before it was pointed out to anyone.

Re:It's the Subtle Edits that are the Problem...

[SoCalChris]

Yep, here's a good example.

Conrad Burns, senator for Montana.

Over the last several months, quotes of his which are extremely offensive to many people have been slowly dissapearing from his Wikipedia page. They're still on WikiQuote though.

In 1994, Burns told the editorial board of the Bozeman Chronicle that when asked by a constituent, "How can you live back there in Washington, DC with all those niggers?" he replied, "[It's] a hell of a challenge." When he was asked about the use of the racial slur, he said: "I don't know. I never gave it much thought."

On February 17, 1999, while at a meeting of the Montana Implement Dealers Association in Billings, Montana, Burns referred to Arabs as "ragheads". Burns later apologized.

In 2000, he offended a Billings woman when he pointed to her nose ring and asked her what tribe she was from.

On December 21, 2005, Burns stated that "We've got to remember that the people who first hit us in 9/11 entered this country through Canada." This claim, which is false and is directly contradicted by the findings of the 9-11 Commission, drew criticism from those questioning Burns' grasp of domestic security. Canadian ambassador Frank McKenna demanded an apology from Burns.

Recently, Burns ran into a group of firefighters in an airport, who had just finished fighting a 92,000 acre fire, and were getting ready to return home. He walked up to them and said "See that guy over there? He hasn't done a God-damned thing. They sit around. I saw it up on the Wedge fire and in northwestern Montana some years ago. It's wasteful. You probably paid that guy $10,000 to sit around. It's gotta change." That section is still in there, but I bet it'll be gone within a week.

I would change the wiki entry so that those are back in there, because I feel that they are important topics for someone who is running for reelction in a few months. I'm just not familiar enough with how to edit Wikipedia.

MOD Parent Down

[brian0918]

"I think Colbert's point was that Wikipedia and other vote based knowledge bases"

Wikipedia is not a democracy. Evidence-based, rational discussion leading to consensus, not voting, is the primary method by which article content is determined.