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Spanish TV Channels Vandalize Wikipedia
strider2004 writes to tell us that Barrapunto, a Spanish tech news site, has outed two TV stations in Spain, one public and the other private, for engaging in Wikipedia vandalism for the sake of a story. (The link is in Spanish; Google translation here.) The public station introduced falsehoods into the Wikipedia entry for John Lennon; the private one vandalized the Elvis Presley entry. Both stations said they were performing an "experiment" to check the reaction time of Wikipedia. Both articles were promptly corrected by other editors.
Update: 08/19 13:01 GMT by KD : Barrapunto is not affiliated with Slashdot.
Update: 08/19 13:01 GMT by KD : Barrapunto is not affiliated with Slashdot.
Anyone can change it without anything to back it,{{citation-needed}} generally changed by the whiny commie demoncrat terrorists to spread their communist lies.{{citation-needed}}
Then why do they speak Mexican in Spain?
for all the idiots: Mexico != Spain
It is for sufficiently large values of Mexico.
WIKIPEDIA... A free encyclopedia, so free ANYONE can edit it. Are child molesters using it to reach out to YOUR CHILDREN? The answer... coming up later this hour.
This is news?
Bueno, fue hecho con una computadora...
What?
I can't believe this is true! Why did no one tell me that Slashdot has a Spanish version? Seriously, looking at it is like looking at Bizarro Slashdot.
How on Earth can two television stations be of homosexual leanings?
Vandalizing wikipedia is gay.
I've seen a few of my high schools students editing Wikipedia with bogus info just for kicks.
"We were just testing to see how fast the emergency services would react..."
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Their slogan is not "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters", but "La informacion que te interesa"...
What does that make them, the spanish Drudge Report?
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
clicking on the Barrapunto link, I get an advertisement for something called "Dorkbot Madrid"
I think it's the first time an advertisement has ever made me want to buy something, particularly when I have no clue what it is.
"Both stations said they were performing an "experiment" to check the reaction time of Wikipedia."
Maybe someone should perform an "experiment" to test the stability of that TV station's websites.
Simple demoncrat, look at who cites WikipediaBS as a source. Oh, it is you whiny commie demoncrat terrorists that love Communist Linsux and Open-Sores. It is only you demoncrats that are allowed to change it to suit your agenda in turning America into yet another failed socialist experiment.
Properly vandalizing wikipedia would be. But these TV stations are just wannabees!
If you want your vandalism to stick, become smarter. Either pick lesser known subjects (John Lennon and Elvis Presley are just too high-profile: these are well-watched, and anyting funny will be corrected within minutes). Or, if you absolutely must pick well-known subjects, at leas be smarter about it:
One way would be to make more than one change, using more than one username (I hope you made one of these? "Anonymous IP" edits are just too easy to spot, and raise too many red flags).
- use first username to add vandalismus and lots of expletives to article.
- use second username to "helpfully" revert the expletives, but sneakily leave the vandalism in place...
Most editors won't see through this.Ok, ok, for the first edit you may actually use an IP (but, pleae use a proxy!) to make it look more real.
Oh, and for the helpful username, be sure to fill in your user page and your user talk page, to make sure that the link won't show up red, which is another tell-tale sign that something might be up.
Also, another way of successfully vandalizing a page is to add funny but true stuff. As the stuff is true, nobody will dare to revert it, so it'll stay in place forever, leaving lot of people to wonder why the heck "butcher's son" is such an important phrase that it is mentioned in a phrase list of a language's wikipedia page.
Or usurp a well-known contributor's username, by using letter look-alikes. For instance, in many fonts, the sequence rn looks surprisingly similar to m. Use it to your advantage!
Other fun stunts involve images: