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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.

4 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Fair's fair by cabalamat3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think someone should write graffiti on big letters on the walls of these TV stations... purely as an experiment, you understand, to see how long it takes to remove it.

  2. Response times depend on the article by JimboFBX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Other "experiments" kept from us:

    Response time for vandalizing Sonic Hedgehog - 8 days
    Response time for vandalizing Sonic the Hedgehog - 8 seconds

  3. Re:barrapunto - not just for nerds by Flipao · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's no proper translation for terms like "nerd" or "geek" in spanish, so the only slogan that'd make sense would be "News for people who're good with computers, but socially inept", which doesn't quite have the same ring to it. As a proper nerd, I of course learned english just so I could read the original version of Slashdot. :P

  4. Re:Good Ol' Unreliable WikipediaBS by denebian+devil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Or, you know, not:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stephencolb ert

    "BEFORE YOU POST HERE: Please realize that this user was NOT blocked for vandalism, joking, or 'poking fun at Wikipedia'. This user was banned for violation of Wikipedia's Username policies which state that "Names of well-known living or recently deceased people" are inappropriate and should be indefinitely blocked until confirming evidence (in this case, from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central) shows that this is, in fact, Stephen Colbert. Although Mr. Colbert 'made the edits on national television', he was also joking and it is not at all certain if he was in fact the person who made the edits attributed to this account. Until the blocking administrator (Tawker) receives word from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central that this is Mr. Colbert, this account will remain blocked."