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The Biggest Hoaxes In Wikipedia's First Decade

Posted by Soulskill on from the giraffes-turn-out-not-to-actually-wear-pants dept.

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."

6 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. It would be very interesting ... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... 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.
    1. Re:It would be very interesting ... by Brett+Buck · · Score: 1, Interesting

      It's more than a message. The problem with Wikipedia has been discussed many times - it's not about getting the most accurate information, it's about getting the information from people who have a lot of time on their hands.

            Everybody says, "well if you see something incorrect, you can fix it". Well, true, and then someone else can "unfix" it,by claiming NPOV, original research, etc, or just by having the free time to undo it with no particular justification. It doesnt matter if someone is the established expert, as long as some weenie is sitting in his mom's basement and has a hard-on about some topic, he wins. Established experts are explicitly prevented from providing their expertise. The Encyclopedia Brittanica certainly has it's flaws but they generally seek out expertise, not bar it. That's why it's never going to be anything more than a curiosity or a source of well-referenced bullshit.

    2. Re:It would be very interesting ... by Brett+Buck · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Problem is there is no way to know whether any particular page is a function of the "working" portion, or the bullshit portion.

    3. Re:It would be very interesting ... by idontgno · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Pay no attention to how well overall Wikipedia is erroneously perceived to actually work.

      FTFY. Wikipedia's over the hump. Its accuracy is irrelevant to its popularity and mindshare in the web info market. It would take a continuous train of grievous and gratuitous contrafactuality, plus the unlikely genesis of a viable alternative, to make it less popular. And after all, modern culture is always about popularity.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  2. One that happened to my CG in the Marines by orphiuchus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Ethanol is odorless ... by clyde_cadiddlehopper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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