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The Biggest Hoaxes In Wikipedia's First Decade
jbrodkin writes "Wikipedia will celebrate its 10th birthday on Saturday, with founder Jimmy Wales having built the site from nothing to one of the most influential destinations on the Internet. Wikipedia's goal may be to compile the sum total of all human knowledge, but it's also, perhaps, the best tool in existence for perpetuating Internet hoaxes. Top hoaxes include a student who fooled the entire world's media with a fake obituary quote, Rush Limbaugh spouting inaccurate facts lifted from Wikipedia, the incorrect declaration of Sinbad's death, Stephen Colbert's African elephant prank, Hitler posters on the bedroom wall of a teenage Tony Blair, and several fake historical figures invented out of thin air. Wales has taken steps to head off vandalism including preventing unregistered editors from creating new pages and temporarily protecting controversial articles, but Wikipedia's very nature makes it susceptible to the hoaxes described in this story."
Let's try the hoax in the summary that Jimmy did it all. The correct answer is:
The earliest known proposal for an online encyclopedia was made by Rick Gates in 1993,[1] but the concept of an open source web-based online encyclopedia was proposed a little later by Richard Stallman around 1999. Wikipedia was formally launched on 15 January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger using the concept and technology of a wiki pioneered by Ward Cunningham.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_wikipedia
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
After the Essjay thing, where a nobody dropout claimed to be a respected academic and was promoted to a position of leadership, and the repeated articles in the media about Wikipedia's complete unreliability (and occasional outright lies inserted into articles by interested people and organizations), who would trust it at all?
... to see a list of the top ten errors in Britannica (or any other respected paper encyclopedia) corrected in Wikipedia. I suspect that it wouldn't be hard to make at all; the only challenge would be choosing the ten best from a very long list. But of course that wouldn't play to the article's message.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If not, how long will it be before one is created to document Wikispoofs?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
this always made me chuckle...
No, I don't think the act was funny or it should be joked about, before you start.
Rush Limbaugh spouting inaccurate facts lifted from Wikipedia
Rush Limbaugh spouting inaccurate facts isn't a hoax, it's standard operating procedure.
If you think about it, smart people know how Wikipedia really works (or fails to work) and how it's a totally unreleiable source for information alone. Feel free to go see the quoted source in any article and then you've got something but wikipedia articles by themselves with no external sources that can be checked are the same reliability as a random forum post.
So really, the biggest wikipedia hoax was wikipedia convincing everyone from Rush Limbaugh to prosecutors in court cases and thousands of others that it was a bulletproof source for information. They make it look sooo clean and nice and professional and don't have any visible warning about the inaccuracy in most cases. If they'd just put on the top of every article in 36 point font: "WARNING: some random person wrote all this and it might be completely made up" then it would be okay but until then, it looks like the hoax continues.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The founder of Orange Julius did not invent a shower stall for pigeons
Uhh, BULLSHIT. I spent the better part of my 50s grappling with the feather-matrix. -Harold Julius.
Bloomberg Businessweek has a great story about Wikipedia.
FTA: A 2005 study in the journal Nature found that in a sample of articles, there were an average of 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia. (Britannica objected to the Nature study, calling the methodology "fatally flawed.") Wikipedia, however, has problems Brittanica doesn't. An error corrected in Britannica stays corrected; in Wikipedia, it may not. (By the same token, rapidly changing events can be covered in pace by Wikipedia.)
What happened to Larry Sanger so that he does not even get mentioned anymore?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Wikipedia is still the fastest first step to something usable overall. If you expect 10% of every page to be wrong, it's still enough to settle basic coworker arguments.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
And yet it's highly likely that if someone had come along trying to fix these hoaxes at the time they were posted, the person would have been called a vandal and the hoax material would have been restored. It's commonplace that well-accepted, though wrong, facts have been put back after being replaced by more accurate information by the editor(s) of the page who practically hover over them hitting the F5 key.
Sanger still gets a lot of credit, giving Stallman any credit since he mentioned the idea at one point is kind of stupid. Having an idea and not doing anything about it is exactly the same as never having the idea.
I can't miss the opportunity to relate this little story: At my last command before I got out of the Marine Corps I was wasting time on Wikipedia one day and I decided to look up the new General who had taken command the week before, I was shocked to find out that he is in fact a "world renowned necromance, responsible for the de-vaginization of Ma Jaya", and that his death had been "fortold by Ma Jaya using the razor leaf technique". After I laughed until I had nearly pissed myself, I had to report it to our security manager as a possible threat against the general. Which was also hilarious.
"We have the smoking gun"
Every chemist knows that pure ethanol is odorless and every reputable reference book describes it that way. And yet the wikipedia article on ethanoI to this day describes ethanol as having "a strong characteristic odor." I have tried to correct this obvious error but my edits are quickly reversed. Perhaps this is a small internet hoax that is being perpetuated so police can continue to attest that the "smell of alcohol" was on drunk drivers' breath? (That smell actually is from aldehydes and esters produced when ethanol is broken down in the liver.)
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
In the German Wikipedia, someone added yet another name [link target in German] to the long list of names of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a German politician. Afterwards, some newspapers copied the changed name from Wikipedia (without giving the source). Then someone at Wikipedia reverted that change, only to get the revert reverted again, citing one of those newspapers as source.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You sir are clearly unfamiliar with the US patent office.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Wikipedia is still the fastest first step to something usable overall. If you expect 10% of every page to be wrong, it's still enough to settle basic coworker arguments.
Nice to see your basic use case for Wikipedia isn't anything dumb like archiving human knowledge, or allowing for the free exchange of information and ideas...
It's the same thing that happened to that other guy who made the discovery of 'Watson's Double Helix of DNA'.
Eventually, history just decides that having more than one person be responsible for any given thing is too complicated for kids to remember.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Larry Sanger is obviously a hoax made to make Jimmy look bad. The man does not exist!
he doesnt care if it is a hoax or not if it makes his argument look better he will use it and if he cant find anything he will make it up himself.
Larry Sanger was employed by Jimmy Wales, and has spend every waking moment dissing Wikipedia since he was kicked out of the project. So Jimmy was the main guy to my mind.
the top 10 wikipedia hoaxes are obviously yet to be widely regarded or understood as such.
Only if the editors think that knowledge is significant. Plenty of stuff gets deleted because someone decides that it isn't important enough.
Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence
#DeleteChrome
In fairness to Stephen Colbert on the African Elephant prank, the scientific data release a couple of months later did vindicate his claim that the elephant population had significantly increased. Oddly enough it created an element of truth for his concept of wikiality true as well.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
Oh wait that's politically incorrect to even mention isn't it?
Wikipedia is fantastically useful, if used properly.
If used improperly, it is just as unreliable as... any other page you stumble across on the internet (including on slashdot).
Incorrect method: read an article, and trust it implicitly as the absolute truth. Frankly, this is something that should be avoided for reading any article, regardless of who published it.
Correct method: read the article and provisionally consider it to be true. If you feel in the slightest bit uncomfortable about anything in it, do the following:
1. Check the history tab and look at the last few edits to see if there has been recent vandalism injected into it (always recommended).
2. Check the discussion tab to see if anyone is complaining about anything in it (this step is pretty optional most of the time).
3. Click the references on parts you question and read the referenced articles.
4. Click some external links and see if it checks out.
Recommended method: read the article and edit it as you go. Each time something sounds a little strange, do a bit of research and make it better and/or insert references. Do some copy-edits too. By the time you have completed the article, you will be a basic expert on the subject, and you will have substantially improved the article for all future readers. You rock!
There was supposed to be an accompanying article "10 biggest non-hoaxes on Conservapedia", but they couldn't come up with 10.
I'll bypass your complex tone and reply by mentioning the Deletionist viewpoint that says, (hold on while I look for the post in this thread), bunratty's point from 3:28pm,
"...People tend to forget that it's an encyclopedia, not a place to deposit the sum total of all human knowledge on every subject. Encyclopedia articles should cover only the most important aspects of a subject. Readers who want every little detail should go to the sources or other material referred to in the article..."
It's also definitely not quite the "free-of-peer-pressure" exchange of ideas. There's definitely an art to getting a fact to stick.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's the same thing that happened to that other guy who made the discovery of 'Watson's Double Helix of DNA'.
Eventually, history just decides that having more than one person be responsible for any given thing is too complicated for kids to remember.
Nice attempt at ... well, pulling something out of your rear end. People remember "Crick and Watson" - and probably always in that order - if they remember either of them at all.
#DeleteChrome
I dunno, the pair of names "Watson and Crick" are often associated with the double helix; the real scandal is the lack of credit given to Rosalind Franklin.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
I think Francis Crick is far more well known than Sanger. In fact, wikipedia has a page for the phrase Watson and Crick, and if you type "Watson and" into Google, the first suggestion is "Watson and Crick."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
http://www.google.com/search?q=who+discovered+dna&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
That's a google search for who discovered DNA.
If crick is listed at all, he is listed second in every case on the first page of results.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It's the same thing that happened to that other guy who made the discovery of 'Watson's Double Helix of DNA'.
Eventually, history just decides that having more than one person be responsible for any given thing is too complicated for kids to remember.
What you're talking about is fame, not history. Watson may be the most famous (partially owing to his ill-advised comments regarding race and intelligence), but history does remember Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin. Just look at, what else, the wiki page.
One could argue that history will somewhat balance out the fame situation, which seems unfair. Franklin, having died at 37, wasn't given much credit at the time and also didn't get a Nobel. She seems saintly compared to the other three, due to the controversy over using her data without giving her credit (and Watson even maligning her posthumously in his book) even before you take into account Watson's recent behavior.
I'm just saying the trend is there, not that it has reached its culmination. History gradually reduces all events to accomplishments by one person. In a hundred years or so, it will take effort to find out that there was a person named Crick involved.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I would contend that Wikipedia's biggest hoax of the decade hasn't been revealed yet.
I know of several hoaxes that still exist on prominent pages.
My son tells stories of the days he was in high school (2005-2006 or so), where they would have competitions to insert random "facts" into articles and see how long they would last. It was a game they played.
He told me that he happened to go to school with a baseball player's son, and in July 2006, someone had inserted that "Johnny Bench is the only major league baseball player who was also a professional bowler." As my son tells the story, Bench's son removed this false information many times, but his legitimate edits kept getting reverted by the Wikipedia staff. It doesn't appear on the page now, but it was on the Wikipedia page so long that it has been repeated around the web many times (Google '"Johnny Bench" bowler' has 184,000 hits).
And now one more! Did you hear that Johnny Bench was a professional Bowler?
I find it hilarious that a trusted source, his own son, couldn't get the mis-information corrected in Wikipedia. Maybe Quora has something up on Wikipedia. Maybe Wikipedia should add the "trusted source" feature that Quora has (identifying the contributor and their credentials).
Google search for "crick and watson": About 84,100 results (0.26 seconds)
Google search for "watson and crick": About 126,000 results (0.22 seconds)
You stand corrected.
Couple of days ago I heard somebody on the radio make, what I thought, was a good point. The very fact that Wikipedia is well known to be [somewhat] unreliable had the positive effect of making people question all their sources, not just Wikipedia. If you get burned a couple of times while citing from Wikipedia, maybe you'll be a bit more careful overall with what you cite. It's an optimistic view to be sure, but I liked it.
Somebody edited the entry on IBM ClearCase to state that it, "just isn't a very good tool."
Somethings are universally true and require no further explanation.
This reminds me of the Great Webcomic quelling a few years back on wikipedia, where editors considered anything that wasn't in print form as "not notable" and thus deleted them almost without question, as such nearly all webcomics, except for perhaps Penny Arcade were deleted. As an experiment, Kris Straub made several fake accounts, and used all of them to lobby deletion requests on his own comics (Starslip, formerly Starsip Crisis) using entirely bogus information. The editors listened, and deleted his own article, after which he made the reveal at what he'd done. Needless to say, the editors were pretty... upset about that.
If Stallman had filed a patent, I'd credit that as "doing something". Instead he just said "Hey, it'd be cool if this existed". If that counts, I will eventually be remembered as the inventor of the flying car and hot chicks who want to have sex with me.
I'm actually talking about history and what winds up in the history books. This may be about to undergo a sea change because the internet allows deep references to be maintained at low cost, but if it doesn't, there is a tendency for events to be simplified down the further in the past they are.
History isn't what happened. It's a story about what happened, invariably significantly fictional. Humans simply aren't capable of absorbing enough information for it to be anything else.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Articles which celebrate Wikipedia hoaxes will only fan the flames, inspiring more insipid vandalism of Wikipedia. Messing stuff up is easy - even a baby knows how to mess up perfectly clean diapers. Creating a consistent, accurate and useful body of knowledge is hard. Having people actively tearing down something you're trying to build makes it doubly hard.
The big problem is the replication of Wikipedia's data. Even if a fake entry is corrected, earlier citations based on it can still appear long afterward.
Except, that's actually a counter-example. It's always "Watson and Crick"
Beta is bad enough to make me go edit settings like this sig that haven't been touched since I joined
My point is that it's not ... go follow the google link I provided. Most of the citations are for Watson only on the first page. And the trend is headed pretty fast in that direction.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I doubt it, Watson and Crick are nice short names. Placed side by side, they have a nice sound to them. If it were something like Dubrovnik and Rutherford you might have a point, but I think we can remember "Watson and Crick."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If he had filed a patent on an idea that would pretty much make him a total hypocrite.
At an old job, some of my coworkers made a wikipedia page about one of themselves, only they changed his past to be an industrialist from the late 1800s, complete with photoshopped images from his facebook, and a few citations from websites that they made themselves. This was all just a prank to see if it would last a week or so. It did, and they had their laugh, and forgot about it.
Four months later...
"Hey, remember that time we made a fake wikipage about so-and-so? Yeah that was hilarious! I wonder if it's still there..."
Not only was it still there, but the article had been expanded on and fleshed out. They realized they should have ended it sooner, and deleted the article. The next day, the article was restored, which began a back and forth of deleting and restoring, until they finally got a warning from an editor, threatening a ban if they did it again. To this, they replied that the entire article was a fake, and sent them links to the originals of the photoshopped pictures.
"And that, Seth, is why we're banned from editing wikipedia from the office. Again."
> Are you saying that if I have 2 coconuts and somebody gives me 3 coconuts that I have as many coconuts as I make up?
That depends. Does accounting qualify as a creative form of applied mathematics?
and he will also collapse it. The ability to patrol edits that he created in order to stop hoaxes is less patrolling and more like trolling. I've had factual, verifiable inclusions or corrections to articles removed on several occasions. I've even had spelling corrections undone.
Maybe my username just seemed like trouble.
Those hoaxes are just people have a bit of fun.
It's not like the paper encyclopedia guys have never done it. Heck, there's a volume of an encyclopedia floating around that covers everything from Menage-Ottawa. Surely that wasn't accidental.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Wikipedia has a huge problem with PR spin and scrubbing by devotees of various cults and political factions. The entry on Sun Myung Moon, for example, looks like there's a full-time team of zombies making sure it never says anything negative about him. You can see a similar pattern on the article for Lyndon LaRouche.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I've actually used Wikipedia for my own little hoax that I used to use in bars. I changed the wikipedia page for a Boy Band that a lot of people have heard of but not many are huge fans of (5ive, if you're wondering). I did this for two reasons, 1. No one knows the member's real names, and 2. not many people are going in to edit the page. Anyway, I put my name in as one of the members. I would talk to random people while out, and casually mention that I used to be in a boy band. I'd show the wikipedia page, as well as a picture (grainy, so one of the guys in the band looks like he could be a young me).
My friends used to really get a kick out of how many people believe would believe me. It made me laugh quite a bit.
You mean Crick?[likely spelled wrong but seems counter to the point to look it up] I never remembering ever learning about DNA other than it being discovered by Watson and Crick. If you are on the other hand referring to someone working around the same time as Watson and Crick but independently than you are right.
Except -- If the article says the average human has eleven fingers, and you count yours and come up with 10, and put that in -- that is not permitted, because it is "original research." You have to find a published source that says there are 10. So good luck trying to actually put useful information in.
Absolutely. In any case, the person _usually_ overlooked in the story of the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA is Rosalind Franklin, who was the one that produced the crystal data that Watson and Crick used.
Yes Crick. Which people still remember right now because they learned it in school. But the current generation in school has textbooks that say Watson.
And of course, there were in fact a number of other people with significant involvement, in some cases maybe more important than Watson or Crick, but history must choose who is to be remembered, and who to be forgotten.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Crick is mentioned in every single page of the first page of results that I get.
He is mentioned first on the following pages on the first page of results:
http://www.experiment-resources.com/who-discovered-dna.html
http://www.brighthub.com/science/genetics/articles/13872.aspx
Although the parent's claim that people usually say Crick first is obviously wrong, it doesn't look to me like many people only credit Watson.
Not that I remembered either name from my schooling. It's been way too long since I took biology.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
History gradually reduces all events to accomplishments by one person. In a hundred years or so, it will take effort to find out that there was a person named Crick involved.
Clark (of Louis and Clark fame) would probably disagree with you there...
It really just matters how it is popularized -- I've never heard Louis or Clark discussed separately, just as I've never heard anything about Watson without mentioning Crick (although Franklin is the loser in that one), so they will probably stay in the consciousness indefinitely, or at least as long as we're talking about them.
The fact that Wales is often discussed without mentioning Sanger at this point will likely lead to him being completely forgotten in a general sense associated with Wikipedia.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
If only people would listen to Ryan North this problem would already be solved.
http://www.everytopicintheuniverseexceptchickens.com/
Many people complain that Wikipedia isn't considered a reliable source. This story shows the reason Wikipedia can not be considered a reliable source.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
'That's a google search for who discovered DNA...If crick is listed at all, he is listed second in every case on the first page of results.'
- DNA was discovered by Frederick Miescher in the 19th century.
- The original DNA _structure_ paper listed Watson and Crick as authors in that order:
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html
This is presumably why they've been listed this way ever since.
- If either is mentioned in the default 2-line results excerpt when I run your Google search, both are (with one exception).
- The first hit mentions only Watson in this excerpt, but in the specific context of discovering the correct base pairing, which was indeed his individual insight, as he explains here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecyvr8a-0D0
Nobody is going to forget Crick, unless of course the Palin-Voldemort campaign is successful in 2012 and all books are burnt.
Wikipedia:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia
It looks like about 50 errors were recorded.
How many britannica volumes would it take ..... to correct the errors in Wikipedia?
-wb-
This is why it's important to cite reliable sources, so any reader can verify the information. The real problem with Wikipedia is not the incorrect information (although there certainly are some errors), but all the useless crud that keeps gathering in articles.
Ok, it's important, but first, there's no real effective mechanism to make sure it happens at all, there are plenty of articles with unsupported outlandish statements.
Second, even when sources are given, there's nothing to stop any old rubbish that finds its way into half-credible print being used as 'supporting' citation to peddle some false line. Some editors will even put in substandard references and delete better references, in support of their chosen point of view, and again there's nothing much in practice to stop them.
For me the clincher is the Wikipedia policy for "verifiability, not truth" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability. A verifiability that is 'not truth' is only a pseudo-verifiability. There's seemingly no policy that (with any reasonable force) facilitates and encourages exclusion of pseudo-verifiable but untrue material.
I can't understand how Wikipedia credibility can survive a policy like the current state of its 'verifiability' 'standard'.
Proper verifiability should be expressly a means or a route towards truth, not a substitute for it, and subject to scrutiny and recall in that light.
-wb-
It's interesting that the article mentions the incident where Limbaugh reports a wiki hoax, but skims over the incident where he was the victim of one.
Around the time of the sale of the Rams NFL team, Rush Limbaugh was a prospective buyer. Someone against the sale vandalized his wiki page attributing to him several quotes about supporting slavery and other such things which he never said. The false quotes were widely reported in the media, and as a result of these quotes and the resulting controversy, this caused his bid for the team to fall through.
I would think that at least one such case where wiki vandalism led to more than just egg on on someone's face would be mentioned in the article. I guess though, that since Limbaugh is a favorite whipping boy it must be okay since it only what he does, rather than what happens to him that matters.
When I mention of subjects that I read, I try to mention the person's name i.e. according to Jim Oberg the Soviets did this and that on their space program. or a website (i.e. "latest gripe I heard on slashdot or hamsexy or...") so if it's complete bunk, oh well, maybe someone can reply with a correction. But I get concern with so many wikipedia sites on slashdot. It has value but problem is wikipedia has contaminates which makes everything else suspect. I guess with Britannica, editors had to really work hard to doublecheck information or at least mention dubious information as not verified. Because once you print and send out, a bit difficult to make changes.
mfwright@batnet.com
The problem here is that Rosalind, at that time, was a technician. Though her x-ray techique was extraordinary, it's not a scandal but just a common problem with scientific credit attribution.
Did I get whooshed? It's "Lewis". http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/
True and insightful on both points. Wish I could mod you up but I already posted in this thread.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
I read the article, and found nothing in it about Wikileaks being a tool for perpetuating hoaxes.
It looks like we have a Hoax Hoax. From here we see that Julius Freed DID, in fact, invent a shower stall for pigeons. These people need to check their facts better!
Funny, growing up it was always "Crick and Watson" (I grew up in Hungary). From all I've read that's about the right order, though it's hardly surprising that in America it would be "Watson and Crick". Very many scientific discoveries are attributed to different people in different countries -- the difference is most stark on the two sides of the old Iron Curtain.
Is both a fruit and a vegetable, was for over 10 months. :. i totaly dont know who was responsible for that.....
recently changed back
she was also, sadly, dead by the time of the award and the Nobel can't be awarded posthumously.
It's not hard to verify Wikipedia information which is paramount to using it as a reference. If Tony Blair were a closet nazi as a teenager you would find a lot of information to back up the wiki entry. Thing is, too many people (>90% ?) lap up for fact whatever lands in their Inbox or Browser page and simply refuse to spend two minutes to see if the piece of information carries any authenticity. It's the root cause for soooo many other problems.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
What happened to Larry Sanger so that he does not even get mentioned anymore?
Jimmy Wales won, and wrote the history book. Looks like the old adage is true. You saw it happen here...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Larry Sanger was employed by Jimmy Wales
Crap. Larry Sanger was employed by Bomis.
and has spend every waking moment dissing Wikipedia since he was kicked out of the project
Irrelevant even if true.
So Jimmy was the main guy to my mind.
So in your mind someone becomes the 'main guy' after the event based on their subsequent behavior? Ridiculous.
no the scandal is that Rosalind didn't even know that Watson and Crick had used her x-ray crystals. Watson and Crick had one article and in the same journal Rosalind had her own. She later revised her paper before publishing to add that her results did not contradict Watson and Crick's...
There is nothing factual or true about the information found in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a HOAX! Anyone can change the information there. The information they have posted is "here-say" from articles written by journalists who write what THEY want to be known, not the facts. Anyone who uses Wikipedia for valid information is an idiot.
But the current generation in school has textbooks that say Watson.
[Citation needed]
Definitely not one of the biggest, but after I used photos of a Lego Technic model to demonstrate the functioning of the Falkirk Wheel's caissons, some wank at the BBC got the idea that Lego was used in the design of the Wheel. They reported this in a retrospective on Lego sometime after the original model/description was removed from the Falkirk Wheel page, and this BBC story was then cited to claim that Lego had been used in the design of the wheel!
Most of it is gone from the Wikipedia page, but I go over the various edits in a blog post.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Our biology textbook refers to their using "alternative research means" to acquire the information from her. Our biology teacher pointed out that such "alternative reasearch means" would get us automatic F on any test.
Making a published suggestion to do something, especially suggesting how, precludes someone else patenting that thing. In other words, simply by saying something he's actually doing something more valuable to humanity than patenting!
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();