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Spanish TV Channels Vandalize Wikipedia

Posted by kdawson on from the setting-fire-to-a-house-to-see-how-quickly-the-firemen-arrive dept.

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.

2 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Another Brick In The Wall by abhi_beckert · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is if 8 year old Johnny can't edit the page, he won't bother. Anyone can fix a typo, but if it's too much work they won't do it.

    The openness is the reason wikipedia succeeded. Not because being open gives better content, but because being open gives more content, and more content makes it valuable to more people, and being valuable to more people gives them more editors, and more editors usually gives better content.

    Also, you're forgetting: any page with regular vandalism does get locked down.

  2. Re:The experiment was already done before by belmolis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe the Colbert Report is not on Spanish TV?