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"

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: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: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.