Slashdot Mirror
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."
Who in their right mind would use Wiki as a 'source' document?
It is a great tool and it works as a starting point. You still have to verify data.
Then again, there are people that still try to go whale watching in Lake Michigan.
I thought the goal was to be funny. Considering it was hilarious, I think it worked out perfectly.
Somebody better head over to Wikipedia and proofread the entries for 'irony' and 'satire'.
...not the ones that are obvious vandalism.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
If that's a joke backfiring, what's success? Having America celebrate it's 750th birthday?
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
On the contrary, it proved exactly what Colbert's point was. Wikipedia's very nature makes it prone to misttatements and error. Wikipedia practically had to shut itself down after Colbert proved his point.
Seems like the submitter couldn't see the beauty of the satire. Just like Dave Barry's "Dog Ate My Toes" poetry project, it gave us all a good laugh, which is the entire point of humor and satire.
Backfired? No way. We all got a great laugh from this.
JoAnn
You can see this process most clearly, in the evolution of society's treatment of homosexuals over the past 50 years.
Funny how academia is now going through this process with Wikipedia.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
and you need to repeatedly sample an article in order to determine it's average and standard deviation-- slowly converging on the truth.
Maybe wikipedia should include that information in addtion to the the "This article is contested" warning.
Frankly, wikipedia has a lot of information that you just can't get anwhere else and I will always treasure it for that. But trusting wikipedia for current information-- or opinion, is very dangerous.
Backfired? Quite the opposite. This proves his point. If it's left open you can end up with any facts people choose to insert. The other option is to limit edit rights, which goes against the basic idea behind the site.
I'm sure he didn't go to bed crying because he's been blocked from editing wikipedia.
Developers: We can use your help.
Taking what Colbert did as some deliberate act to sabotage Wikipedia is about as ridiculous as the Bush administration inviting him to the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner and expecting him to shower the President with praise. Colbert was trying to make the point that the majority opinion isn't necessarily the right opinion. One of the tenets of our government is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. So, when you hear politicians crying for straight up-and-down votes when our republican (little 'r') government empowers the minority party to fight against it (via the filibuster), you should remember that we don't live in a democracy. That whole skit was also a clever take on how those in power love to rewrite history to put themselves in a better light.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I think Colbert's point was that Wikipedia and other vote based knowledge bases ultimately conform to the beliefs of the majority, and not actual fact. The truth isn't democratic in nature (although truthiness might be). If a bunch of skinheads get together and vote that the Holocaust never happened, that doesn't make it true. Just because a moderator was watching and locked down the entry isn't a display of Wikipedia's power. The moderator can't handle everything in that fashion. If the power of Wikipedia is in the breadth and good will of it's contributors, then unlock the entry and let's see what happens.
Wikipedia had to limit editing to pages that got vandalized. That doesn't mean any of this "truth by mob" will actually stay in... Wikipedia requires information to be cited by reliable sources, so there's no way that the statements will stick for longer than a few minutes.
Agreed that this is probably not the best way to go about things.
It would be much better for the articles to be changed in a background copy, and then upon some sort of verification, or validation of data, it gets switched to main. It would certainly stop the see-sawing of article submission reliably between fsckers and wiki admins.
That said, if we are going to build a collection of the entire of human knowledge, we are going to have a few rough edges on the data. It's an almost insurmountable task to verify each piece of data entered into wikipedia. Some data can not be verified because of current views, or differing conclusions based on research. If were to ask 30 people to go and count all elephants, I would see 30 different method of counting elephants. Some would use statistical methods to build a "pretty close count" while others would get more accurate results.
There is also the problem of verifying unquantifiable data. How many Ants are there in the world?
There are some things that are impossible. People will have to put up with the fact the the information on community based sites are going to be fuzzy at best. Wikipedia will always be in some sort of "truth flux" where the information you see may, or may not contain some truth. The point is, Wikipedia is a great starting point to get information, but linking to a wiki article in a paper as fact will get you laughed off.
I applaud the notion of a centralised source of human knowledge, even if that comes with it's own drawbacks.
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
Wikipedia is a bit larger than that, and is quite a bit hardier than you imagine.
Other than referring to O'Reilly as "Papa Bear," being loud and obnoxious, and covering his set in American flags, the show is not at all a straight spoof of O'Reilly. A simple spoof of the Factor would give you about 5 minutes of material, but Colbert mocks pretty much the entire media establishment, especially the "opinion" media (which some would argue constitutes all media these days). He also dabbles in some straight Daily Show-style political satire.
I don't know how you could have possibly watched more than one or two episodes of the Colbert Report and still refer to it as nothing but an O'Reilly ripoff. Or maybe you're just repeating what O'Reilly himself says about the show, without having actually watched it yourself.
This raises a number of questions in my mind.
Do the wiki admins make a point of collectively watching all television shows to make sure no one is vandalising their site?
What if someone were to announce their wiki vandalism on, say, local radio -- that is, to an audience of only 80,000 as opposed to 8 million -- would they still be caught?
If Steve alters a part of a wiki entry regarding remarks he himself has made about Oregon, would he not then be making a remark about Oregon, thus making whatever new content he entered technically correct?
If Steve had not publicly announced his vandalism regarding whether or not he had compared Oregon to Portugal, would anyone besides Barry Lopez have cared?
Finally, my name as well as references to my work were removed from a few articles (for instance, from the entries about the Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Narcissism (Psychology)). At least one of the "editors" who were responsible for what appears to be a vindictive act ("Danny") claims to be somehow associated with the Wikimedia's grants commission.
Oh, sweet, sweet irony.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
> It is a question of time before the Wikipedia self-destructs and implodes. ... wank wank wank wank ...
> I was also banned from posting to the Wikipedia
Wikipedia is infested with irrelevancies, self-serving weasel-worded agendas, opinions, and outright falsehoods. Given all this, why should you even care if you were banned? Get off your cross, no one nailed you up there. If this were an article, it'd get the "helphelpimbeingrepressed" tag.
At any rate, the same aspersions are true of usenet, and it never imploded. Serious scholars long ago stopped posting there the same way serious researchers stopped discussing on usenet. Wikipedia's reputation already imploded, though I still find it a valuable resource whenever I want a comprehensive list of unique vehicles in The Simpsons, for example.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
The point of the whole story was 2 things:
= colbert%20wiki for the sketch in question.
1) Point of a slight flaw in wikipedia.
2) Relate this flaw to a point about the Bush administration convincing americans, via half truths and out right lies, that Irag has WMD. He pointed out 2 different surveys on what americans think and it showed a significant rise (currently 50%) in the number of people that think Iraq has WMDs.
The point ( a satirical one ) was that you can make the "truth" want you want if enough people believe it, or edit a document.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFT4OfdnVpU&search
Duh, talkshows are never aired live.
You're responding to a comment that specifically mentions that Colbert "taped the show"... and yet two moderators think you're "Insightful" rather than "Redundant". How did that happen?
And by the way, don't you realize that talkshows usually aren't aired live?
It was hard to read that article over the sound of the grinding axe.
I read the internet for the articles.
Yet the article on Lutheranism is still shorter than the article on Truthiness. The Lutheran movement had a much larger impact on world history than the word 'truthiness'. That was Colbert's overall point; Wikipedia does not represent reality but a subset of reality which he coined Wikiality.
Wikipedia represents the state of human knowledge at some point in time which is vastly different than the Truth. In 50 years an article about Truthiness might be just one line while the article about Lutheranism will still be the same length, if not longer. Wikipedia only has the "truth of the moment" while the Truth is something timeless.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
There is no way in hades that Colbert thinks this comedic-stunt backfired. He nailed front-page-top-story press in a large number of press sources that target his key demographic. Plus, this was absolutely hilarious (at least to me and most in the kingdom on geekdom). PS: Colbert loves Dungeons and Dragons; the man can do no wrong in my eyes!
Horns are really just a broken halo.
How so? I think Colbert proved the point he wanted to make quite nicely. The fact that many entries contained the false statistics for at least some portion of time shows the inherent flaws with the wiki system. (Sure, it was only a short period of time - but imagine you're writing a paper on elephants.. and just happen to come upon the entry at that point in time.)
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Whatever has caused you to have an irrational phobia of this project, I'm sick of hearing you all bitch about it. I don't care if you lost an edit war. I don't care if someone thought your prayer group wasn't notable enough for an entry. And I certainly don't care that wikipedia doesn't agree with your favourite news channel/conspiracy nut.
Its a good project that does what it sets out to do, and does it well. The fact its resisted what is effectively a DDoS attack from a major celebrity with millions of "zombies" at his disposal should testify to that.
No, it isn't perfectly accurate. But if people were to fact check the news as anally as wikipedia is checked, they would find it much, much worse. People find one or two inaccurate articles and hold them up as examples of why wikipedia "doesn't work" whilst failing to mention the thousands of articles that are accurate.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Agreed, I find it useful for things like trivia (particularily geek-centric trivia), but beyond that, it's a pissing match, much like many other "user driven, user controlled, webmocratic" technologies/innovations. One great example, and I only bring it up because it's such a great analogy to wikipedia, is digg. The commentary, and now even the stories that "get promoted" are utter garbage. A free-for-all on a scale like digg or wikipedia just doesn't work.
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
Sam Vaknin has been posting this rant in a lot of places. I actually agree with a lot of what he says in points 1-4. However, although I think #5 has a grain of truth in it (about how WP's culture doesn't have enough respect for actual expertise on a particular topic), he's way off-base in saying that there are other, existing models that are better. Actually, WP arose through a process of trial and error, starting with Nupedia, which was much more elitist. Nupedia never got off the ground, because the barrier to entry was too high. If Vaknin thinks there are other, similar projects that have better designs, I have to wonder why he doesn't just put his effort into contributing to them? I think it would be more accurate to say the WP's initial design was great for getting it off the ground, but it's now starting to become less and less appropriate for maintaining a more mature encyclopedia. And finally, when you finish reading the rant, it becomes clear that Vaknin's issues with WP have a very personal angle to them. He seems to spend a lot of time promoting his books, and, reading between the lines, it sounds like he might have tried to do that on WP, and maybe wasn't sufficiently sensitive to WP's culture and standards to handle that correctly on WP. Actually, if my perception is correct about his behavior, then he's part of the problem on WP, not part of the solution; normal, good editors don't enjoy spending year after year tracking their watchlists to protect their favorite articles from decay, but people who are intent on self-promotion may have a lot more stamina.
Personally, after many years of putting a huge amount of time into WP, I've decided to cut my participation back to pretty close to zero, and see if its structure ever gets updated to something more appropriate for a mature encyclopedia. But it's still a great resource, and I still can't resist fixing a punctuation mistake when I find one in an article --- God, it drives me nuts now when I find a puntuation mistake on a web page, and I realize it's not WP, so I can't fix it :-)
Find free books.
The problem with Wikipedia is the it only works in practice, not in theory.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
to make things liberal.
He makes fun of the administration.
When the administration is liberal, he'll still make fun of it.
Of course, then some ass will go on about how SC is a republican just attacking liberals.
Guess what? not everyone finds the same thing funny.
Personally me and my friends(left right and middle) find him as funny as hell.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Miller was a leftist, right up until 9/11. Immediately afterwards he was a champion of the right.
To put it plainly, the terrorists scared him into becoming a conservative. Therefore, he's a coward and has no credibility in my eyes whatsoever. Watching that video of him learning how to play golf is one of the saddest and lamest things I've ever seen.
If you're going to be a conservative, then be one based upon the merits of the platform. Don't just jump on board because something spooked you.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I couldn't disagree more. Well, maybe I could a little... I do agree that Colbert is rarely laugh out loud funny...
However!
I don't think one needs to love the subject in order to satirize it. I don't think this has ever been the case. Do you not find the Daily Show funny either? They are downright vicious with thier attacks sometimes. Very rarely do I get the sence that they have an affection for thier subject matter and I think that's a good thing. If they donned a "just kidding!" attitude, it would remove the potency of both the humor and the very valid cultural statement that they are making. (This all applies to The Colbert Report as well.)
I will admit that the meaness sometime sucks the merriement from the room. The too-true-to-be-too-funny principle often applies for both shows, but while Steward is much better at laughing it off and playing the room, Colbert deliberately wallows in it. (See his keynote at the Washington Press Dinner. How could he even stand it?) But I'll say again: this is not only a good thing for comedy, its a good thing for our culture. Often this satire is so scathing that it far outpaces the standard news organiztions in "sticking it" to the guilty parties, a practice that is very important in a free society. This is what, at root, makes these shows so entertaining: people simply crave that biting hatred of wrong-doing-organizations that seem to be getting a free pass from the rest of the media.
He's not funny to you.
To a lot of people, he's damn funny.
At the White House correspondants dinner he was not only funny, he was funny and fearless. It takes a lot of guts for a comedian to play to an audience he can't see while telling the cold hard truth about the audience he can see.
I know the media savaged him afterwards for not being funny. It was cute. But then if I'd deserved the bad job performance review he'd given them - peppered with humour so the folks at home could laugh at their hapless asses - I'd be all cranky and crotchety too.
Tough.
If the press in America won't do their job, they should expect rough treatment from the public.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
intonations of how important "consensus" is... having to treat idiots and obviously malicious editors as if they were serious [...]
The reason people do this is that it often works. Most people are very reactive. If you treat them like a problem, they'll be a problem. If you treat them like a contributor, they'll act like a contributor. And for people who come looking for conflict, not giving it to them means they go elsewhere.
The only real alternative to being insistently nice is unending war with conflict-hungry fuckwads. For Wikipedia's size, traffic, and number of contributors, there are dumbfoundingly few problems.
And I couldn't be bothered anymore. I logged out, and I haven't been back since.
Is this a problem with Wikipedia, or a problem with your use of Wikipedia?
If you do a frustrating thing too much, you will get fed up with it. Early I ended up hating and quitting a few different jobs because I took them too seriously and burnt out on them. Now I carefully limit my frustration levels to what I can handle. It's the same way with Wikipedia: I do as much as I can where I still enjoy it.
Only on slashdot could this be modded "insightful." Many of the funniest comedians have no love for the things they skewer. According to your theory, George Carlin simply can't be funny as he tears apart the church, business, or idiocy (he is, in fact, hilarious in all cases) . Richard Pryror?. Clearly, we need someone who can appreciate racism to tell jokes about it. Lewis Black? Bill Hicks? You offer a few positive examples of your all-encompassing theory (i.e. there are plenty of folks who skewer things they love) without addressing the avalache of evidence disproving it. Sheesh. If you want to theorize about funny, you better *be* funny. And by the way, just because colbert doesn't make you laugh doesn't mean he's not funny -- it means you dont' get him. There's a big difference. Not every comedian is going for breadth of audience, and that doesn't make them less funny than, say Larry the Cable Guy, any more than topology a lessor math than arithmetic.
No there aren't. There are massive problems with most of Wikipedia, but there aren't enough editors to give a shit.
You didn't hear his whole sentence. He didn't say, "there are dumbfoundingly few problems." He said, "For Wikipedia's size, traffic, and number of contributors, there are dumbfoundingly few problems." If the problems were that massive(to the point were it made the whole project worthless), then I should be able to hit a random article and have the majority of its content wrong.
To make my point I was going to go to a random article to verify it's claims. The article I came across, Billiard Techniques is just happens to be something I know a little about as a amauter pool player. The article has a lot of problems(facts needed verfication, external links would be nice, etc.) but article does contain correct information about Draw and Follow, English, and massé techniques. Not enough to give it much authority, but enough to where someone who didn't know anything about the techniques would understand them after reading it.
It might be tough for you to believe that the Wikipedia can work. I sometimes do myself. I mean, who believe a huge number of
self-centered, semi-rational, animals that have been fighting with each other for thousands of years would have created something as beautiful as civilization?
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
"A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged", yes, but "a liberal is a conservative who's just been arrested".
"On 9/11 our country was mugged" by terrorists, but now we're learning now what it is to be searched and wiretapped without probable cause, arrested without charges, and detained without legal representation.
I'm hoping that some of these fear-created conservatives will flip over to being fear-created liberals before it's too late.