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How Spurious Wikipedia Edits Can Attach a Name To a Scandal, 35 Years On

Posted by timothy on from the same-complaint-that-the-dracula-family-has dept.

Andreas Kolbe (2591067) writes For more than six years, Wikipedia named an innocent man as a key culprit in the 1978/79 Boston College point shaving scandal. The name Joe Streater was inserted into Wikipedia by an anonymous user in August 2008. The unsourced insertion was never challenged or deleted, and over time, Streater became widely associated with the scandal through newspaper and TV reports as well as countless blogs and fan sites, all of which directly or indirectly copied this spurious fact from Wikipedia. Yet research shows that Streater, whose present whereabouts are unknown, did not even play in the 1978/79 season. Before August 2008, his name was never mentioned in connection with the scandal. As journalists have less and less time for in-depth research, more and more of them seem to be relying on Wikipedia instead, and the online encyclopedia is increasingly becoming a vector for the spread of spurious information.

5 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. And the culprit is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wikipedia. The journalist with "less and less time" are never to blame.

    1. Re:And the culprit is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've lied on Wikipedia, but only one time, and in a harmless-fun manner (normally I'm only produtive and helpful). It was about a thing that's virtually unknown where I live. They had a list of what the object in question is called in different languages, and I added an entry for my language which means basically "WhatTheHeckIsThis?" Because so many sources copy Wikipedia, now whenever I search for the "WhatTheHeckIsThis" term on Google Images, I find tons of pictures of the object in question - from people selling them, people discussing them, etc. Imagine searching on say ebay and seeing someone advertise something as a "WhatTheHeckIsThis?" in your language. lol.

      Sorry..... I know, one shouldn't lie to Wikipedia. But someone will notice it eventually, get a good laugh, correct it, and no harm done. Unless the joke goes too far, wherein one day I may walk into a store and see the object in question being sold and listed as a "WhatTheHeckIsThis?", having been marketed as that by a foreign seller or a fellow countryman who found the joke funny. Which also would be great, lol.

  2. Journalists? by Seumas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nobody does any investigative journalism anymore. They take press releases, talking-points, and pre-packaged bits from government agencies and NGOs and tag them with an open and close bit by a local anchor and that's it.

    Look at your average idiot on Tumblr. That is the quality of the average "journalist". Actually, pick a random Tumblr user and they probably *are* a "journalist".

    Also, so what? We've already decided you can say whatever you want about whoever you want on the internet and that's okay. No recourse. Look at Rip Off Report or Yelp or that site that "shames" ex boyfriends. If all of that is fair game, why shouldn't wikipedia be?

  3. Re:Journalists have less time... by real+gumby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...because they're busy doing what?

    At first I read this comment as throwaway snark about listicles and the like, but then it raised for me a pretty interesting question:what evidence do we have that current reporting is less rigourous than it was in the past?.

    I recently looked up the newspaper from the day after I was born and found it full of trivial stuff (except my birth announcement of course!) and articles that looked like they uncritically repeated what one source had told them. I am not sure the quality of reporting, in reality, was ever any better than now.

  4. Re:Research by knightghost · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would go a layer deeper to see what drives lowering journalist integrity... to find that the audience prefers misinfotainment over news. They demand entertainment over learning. Illusion over reality.