Sinbad Rises From Wikipedia Grave

A Chicago Sun-Times article passed to us by an anonymous reader pointed out the fact that the comedian Sinbad is still alive. This is notable, only insofar as Wikipedia thought otherwise. "Rumors began circulating last weekend regarding the posting, said Sinbad, who first got a telephone call from his daughter. The gossip quieted, but a few days later the 50-year-old entertainer said phone calls, text messages and e-mails started pouring in by the hundreds. 'Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again,' the Los Angeles-based entertainer said in a phone interview." Based on the article he seemed fairly okay with the mixup: 'It's gonna be more commonplace as the Internet opens up more and more. It's not that strange.' Wikipedia didn't comment for the Times piece, nor has it contacted the entertainer about the incident.

Comments

How many times is the media going to do this?

[Fastolfe]

How many "kid defaces wikipedia, media reports wikipedia is wrong" cases are we going to see? Haven't people figured out by now that Wikipedia is edited by the public, and might occasionally be vandalized or show inaccurate information? Why are we treating every instance of vandalism as though it were some major media-worthy event?

If anything, this just encourages more kiddies to go do the same thing to more visible entries. "What can we make up about President Bush? Maybe we can get it on CNN like Bobbie did last week!"

Re:How many times is the media going to do this?

[porkThreeWays]

I think the reason the media keeps reporting these things is they are trying their best to show the world internet sources may not be true; and wikipedia is their poster boy. There was a frontline special recently documenting traditional media and what's happened to it in the past few years. I think many in the traditional media are still trying to fight and discredit the internet as much as possible. They think it's a fad and people will return to traditional media. They don't understand that the internet is just as much a fundamental shift as the Gutenberg press. They need to embrace it correctly rather than fight it. I have yet to see a traditional outlet of information fully use the internet in the same way wikipedia has. Wikipedia has become the NY Times of the internet, while other media outlets have a bunch of homer simpson sites they use to throw their print stories on the web.