Slashdot Mirror
False Fact On Wikipedia Proves Itself
An anonymous reader writes "Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia."
I hate to bring this to the attention of the nerd community.... the world existed before the explosion of the internet. This is hard to believe, but true. I have it on good authority that the world started sometime in the 1920's.
That being said, this type of problem existed long before the internet "Person A" starts a rumor. Others pick up on it, and a reporter who talks to "Person A" gets his story confirmed by others who heard the story from Person A. Not new. Not news. The speed of things has definitely sped up in the last decade, but this happened also with the invention of the telephone, telegraph and television.
Also, another nice fact. Wikipedia is not your research center. It is a place to start. If you are using it as a source for your research paper, you should get an F.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
You're not kidding this is nothing new.
The hebrew bible gets the order of Persian kings wrong. Josephus quotes list of Persian kings found in hebrew manuscript. Tada, the list of persian kings is independently verified!
New technology enables this kind of thing to happen with amazing *speed*, but it always took careful consideration and scholarship to disentangle. If anything, having all those explicit timestamps makes this much easier in the information age, but the volume is probably greater than people can really process.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Once upon a time when news outlets reported on news, they needed to protect some of their sources because some of the information could result in retribution on the source. To get sources to open up they promised confidentiality where appropriate and as time went on this became the culture: The news has source authority based on the assumption they are practicing good journalism. As information has recently accelerated, there is less time for good journalism and instead we have good-enough journalism but they still maintain a front of source authority.
Wikipedia almost always avoids original research, because original research requires that they have staff on hand who will vet the information, and Wikipedia doesn't have the staff on hand to do this.
Biographical mistakes are one of the few cases where Wikipedia makes an exception. Please email OTRS, and they'll make sure that a trusted person reviews the information, and corrects the article. The fact that people who contact OTRS provide their email address (and possibly more contact info) means that you (for once) have more credibility than some random anonymous vandal.