Slashdot Mirror
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.
Goofballs add bogus info to Wikipedia; said bogus info is promptly corrected.
This is news?
A Human Right
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.
You open what is supposed to be all the world's knowledge combined in a site, except that the policy is to treat it like a public bathroom. That's fine, but why is it news every time someone gets caught taking a shit in it?
It's fine to let people contribute, but most articles need to be locked down when they are completed, and then you submit stuff to be added for peer review or something. There is no reason why 8 year old Johnny needs to be editing the live version of a page on something he knows nothing about.
Is there enough new information on Elvis arriving, that his page needs to be open to live submissions from anyone 24/7/365?
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.
Just because it's a medium that allows anyone to edit stuff, it doesn't mean adding bogus information isn't vandalism. That's like spraying painting graffiti on a wall isn't vandalism because paint sticks to the wall.
How on Earth can two television stations be of homosexual leanings?
Vandalizing wikipedia is gay.
In case nobody remembers, Stephen Colbert's "experiment" proved the response time for fixing BS entries in wikipedia (that librarians are hiding something) in about 15 seconds. Why do they have to try the experiment otra ves? :P
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The bottom of each page links to Wikipedia'a:
s claimer/
a imer/
s claimer/
l aimer/
s claimer/
General Disclaimer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_di
Which links to the specific disclaimers:
Risk disclaimer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Risk_discl
Medical disclaimer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Medical_di
Legal disclaimer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Legal_disc
and
Content disclaimer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_di
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.
"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?
Other "experiments" kept from us:
Response time for vandalizing Sonic Hedgehog - 8 days
Response time for vandalizing Sonic the Hedgehog - 8 seconds
Vandalism by the media. I guess another entry for this article on Wikipedia.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Then perceptions != reality. It was never OK.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
``or perhaps even a "schuinestreeppunt"?''
Exists, but is actually tweakers.net.
And, IMO, nowhere near as good as Slashdot.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Most of the comments so far seem very upset that the TV channels did this, but it really doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Wikipedia is a community, a society like any other. It has its values, with accuracy being one of the most important, and someone did a social experiment to see how well that community adhered to its principles. Sure, it required being a little bit of a bad actor, but if Slashdot reported on a new study where researchers bumped into people while carrying several packages and found that Linux users were more likely to help them pick up their dropped items, I don't think the comments would be blasting them for assault.
This was minor public vandalism, of a kind the community sees every day, and a kind that it was built to correct. If they had launched a systematic campaign to spread disinformation throughout many articles, that would be a serious problem, but changing the date of Lennon's death to 2007 instead of 1977? If edits like that caused Wikipedia any kind of damage, it would have died years ago.
You know they actually did ban Steven Colbert for that and they tend to pre-emptily lock things that are brought up on the show for changing.
"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.
Wikipedia is an online dictionary. People aren't generally supposed to edit it to contain outright lies on purpose. They can do so, but then again, they can write on walls.
Really ? I must look into it the next time my house needs repainting. And maybe NASA should just forget heat tiles and coat the Space Shuttle with this indestructible material. Not to mention that if you spraypaint your clothes, they become bulletproof - an essential feature in Iraq and American large cities.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Or, you know, not:
b ert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stephencol
"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."
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: