Slashdot Mirror
Phony Wikipedia Entry Used By Worldwide Press
Hugh Pickens writes "A quote attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre was posted on wikipedia shortly after his death in March and later appeared in obituaries in mainstream media. 'One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear,' Jarre was quoted as saying. However, these words were not uttered by the Oscar-winning composer but written by Shane Fitzgerald, a final-year undergraduate student, who said he wanted to show how journalists use the internet as a primary source for their stories. Fitzgerald posted the quote on Wikipedia late at night after news of Jarre's death broke. 'I saw it on breaking news and thought if I was going to do something I should do it quickly. I knew journalists wouldn't be looking at it until the morning,' The quote had no referenced sources and was therefore taken down by moderators of Wikipedia within minutes. However, Fitzgerald put it back up a few more times until it was finally left up on the site for more than 24 hours. While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone's death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre's life, he said. 'I didn't expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised.'"
Both the Guardian & the Independent has this quote in their obits.
So did BBC Music Magazine.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22maurice+jarre%22++%22music+was+my+life
The Guardian has even published a retraction blaming it on the Wikipedia vandalizer - poor Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/31/maurice-jarre-obituary
I'd suggest reading Mark Helprin's "Digital Barbarism" for much more on this topic (as an aside from the main thrust supporting copyright). It amazes me how the Internet has lowered the bar. Hell, when my daughter was three years old she used to cite herself as an authority: "Daddy, according to me..."
It is mostly "star-struck fan time" when journalists interview the politicians and famous people.
It might actually be worse than that. Lots of journalists know that if they ask real questions and press for real answers, the person they're interviewing won't like it, and will stop submitting to the interview. The journalist will get a reputation for being difficult, and other people won't give them interviews either.
So they might not be that they're star struck, but instead kissing ass to get access. And then there's laziness. It's hard to do a good job.
Look it up in Encyclepedia Brittanica and you will find it there. Verified and checked by a lot more than one person. People with a professional regard for what they are doing. Do errors creep in? Sure they do, but they are not only caught they are accidental.
I imagine Britannica isn't written this way, but many topical encyclopedias are farmed out to people with little or no expertise in the area of the entry they are writing. As a grad student, I have received several e-mails requesting interested students to write the entry for a particular topic in the "Encyclopedia of Coptic Literature" or something equally obscure. I know my classmates (and students in general), and I would not confidently rely upon an encyclopedia article they have written in almost all cases. The opportunity to write an article is advertised with the statement "get a publication on your CV."
Even with better encyclopedias, expert writers can still misrepresent things. There's an entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica, a very well-known and highly-regarded work, that essentially misstates facts about an Israeli intellectual property court case. Luckily, I had dug deep enough to figure this out, but it just goes to show you that you cannot rely on the accuracy of encyclopedia articles - even highly regarded ones. Oh, and it is unlikely errors like that will be corrected. If they are, it will be when a new edition is put out... in who knows how many years?
Encyclopedias are fine for well-known facts that you just don't happen to know, to get a basic overview of something, and for the bibliography at the end of the entry. Incidentally, those happen to be the exact same things that Wikipedia is useful for. Anything more serious than that, and you should be doing real research, not relying upon Wikipedia or an encyclopedia.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Don't laugh - because this happened to me. I edited a series of Wikipedia articles with close to a grands worth of topic specific reference works at my elbow...
Every single edit was reverted because "your facts do not match what was found with a Google search".
Sure.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
From the wikipedia article:
A study in 2005 suggested that for scientific articles Wikipedia came close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors."[1] However, the accuracy and validity of Gile's work has been disputed by both Britannica Encyclopedia[2] and Nicholas Carr.[3]
Honestly the whole Wikipedia article is very informative. It has many citations to backup what they say. Wikipedia can be wrong, so can encyclopedia Britannica. But Wikipedia either cites better and more often than Britannica or it is just as useless. Trusting one source is silly... If you CHECK the citations then Wikipedia is an amazing tool.
AP and Thomson Reuters (while high quality news providers) are not the ONLY people putting reporters on the ground around the world. Dow Jones has over 2,000 reporters around the world. They also consistently win awards for best news provider, best financial news, journalist of the year etc. The only difference being Dow Jones doesn't give any news away for free. Plus they focus on business and financial news, not your standard "missing white girl" or human interest story.
Disclaimer - I work for Dow Jones. Not as a journalist, but with the journalists.
It's amazing the kind of people who wouldn't want someone to spray-paint their car over and over to see how long it takes to clean it off, but will do it to other people because it's "just the computer". I wonder what future journalists and sociologists think their jobs are going to be based on 10 years from now. (P.S.: If someone wants this for Wikipedia or somewhere else for some bizarre reason - feel free to copy/modify it as long as you give the same rights to others for the copy/derivatives.)
use your shit to debunk other (actually factual) shit in Wikipedia because another "not-Wikipedia" site says Wikipedia is wrong.
Actually, you don't have to go that far.
What I've learned on Wikipedia is this: False is more important than true.
Put doubt on something written in an article, and the guy who wrote it will be asked for sources, not you. The article will be marked as "needs citation", and in some cases will be deleted simply because you claimed it's all wrong, with no evidence, and nobody else bothered enough to provide said evidence.
If you add something, you'll be asked for proof, and all kinds of proof will not count. Essentially, even if you are the primary source, you'll not count unless you've got it written up on some other website that you can point to. Heck, if you're a second-rate actor and your Wikipedia article suddenly claims you're dead, starting an edit-war with the hoaxer is your best bet in getting that removed. (Wikipedia has a special contact address if you are the subject of an article - according to my own personal experience, the reaction time of that address is about two weeks.)
So in summary: Vandalism is easier than adding something truthful but imperfectly documented. And then people are surprised there's so much crap on Wikipedia.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So you'll just let revisionist historians fuck up our history with LIES?
I won't "let" them. I'll post the information with a reasonable citation; I just won't give up my whole lunch hour to proving the exact horsepower of a particular obscure engine model so that somebody can have a slightly more accurate high-school "research" paper. People who actually need to rely on the information (to re-purpose the engines as backup power generators for their Swedish datacentre) will get a copy of the manual anyhow, so the error is not likely to cause any real harm.
It's like this reply. I'll post this one clarification, but won't be giving any further time to the issue if you choose to reject it.