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How Spurious Wikipedia Edits Can Attach a Name To a Scandal, 35 Years On
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.
As journalists have less and less inclination and ability for in-depth research
FTFY
Wikipedia. The journalist with "less and less time" are never to blame.
...because they're busy doing what?
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?
News at 11.
Education at UMass-Amherst, now an independent accountant in the Denver area.
The Joe Streater in the story left BC after his freshman year in college. Disclaimer: Not saying this LinkedIn page is him, but it could be.
I have a life t0 forwards 3e must developers. The parts. The current
obligatory link
Without it I would've never learned about CmdrTaco's role in the My Lai Massacre.
Your past will eventually catch up with you, Mr. Malda...
#DeleteChrome
Would be defamation laws. They need to be vigorously enforced. False information like this is actually criminal in many jurisdictions. It's time that crap like this gets the submitter pummeled in court instead of "duh duh freedom of speech."
Seems legit
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I thought that the world is about to end (again) and that we were all running out of time.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
WIKIALITY
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/z1aahs/the-word---wikiality
Wikipedia is not in any way INCREASINGLY a vector for the spread of spurious information". It has always been. Since day one it has said openly "Do not use us as a primary reference". Obviously, since the statement was false, it could not have had a reference. Therefor the person who repeated it was the source of the problem.
In short, this author is writing a "file this under D for Duh" article about people writing articles without doing research. Congratulations, sir! You are your own best example!
As an experiment, I added a spurious and incorrect fact to an obscure wikipedia article, complete with a reference to a document which did not support the claim. It took years before my edit was noticed and reversed.
This only works with obscure articles. The more obscure the article, the less it's checked. If you try inserting something spurious into the page on Obama it will be reversed in about 5 minutes.
I've been doing this a lot of late. I'm going to be the most infamous and famous person in the world by 2020!
stand anymore, 1. Therefore it's a productiVity OF AMERICA irc It transforms inAto Some of you have so that their those obligations.
One can dream, OK?
Wikipedia, is just bullshit Wikipedia likes to call the pitbull an "American pitbull" and I corrected that it is a breed from the U.K. England to be precise. It was often used for entertainment by the military "the Black and Tans" who would use them in Ireland to kill domestic dogs. When I corrected them they deleted what I had written. I then corrected "the American bulldog" I said the U.S. have no native dogs and cannot create what has already been created. I said it is an English, dog not a Scottish corgi and not a Irish wolfhound and so on. I said the U.S. take the English bulldog, and they cross it with a St Bernard, and pretend it is an oldtime English bulldog that they have decided to call an American bulldog because "it only exists in America". The U.S. not the American continent. They deleted it. They call the Staffordshire, which comes from Staffordshire England, an American pitbull Staffordshire. I corrected that and said the Staffordshire comes from Staffordshire and it is called a staff and it is not a pitbull which comes from crossing two English breeds. They deleted it. The U.S. also does the same thing with two different native Japanese breeds and they call them American breeds. I corrected them and they deleted that also. If they say black is white it's best to take no notice. in day-to-day discussions it doesn't matter but when you're claiming it is the gospel truth on Wikipedia, then it does matter. It is just Wikishit..
NFI what this news event is about and not interested to find out...america seems like a nice place to visit though!
About sums it up, if you facts check you miss the opportunity and Google will send the traffic to someone else!
...that Wikipedia is a steaming pile of crap. Almost as bad as this damned beta with its fucking Javascript ads that crash Firefox.
This could all have been avoided if the citation whores at wikipedia actually gave a shit about random articles instead of whoring edits (and reverting edits they didn't make) on a small handful of articles.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
...because it might put favored liberal policies or politicians in a bad light. That's why Sharyl Attkisson resigned.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
In the good old days, people also wrote nonsense and published it and it was repeated over and over until everyone accepted it as the truth (the story of George Washington and the cherry tree is an example familiar to most Americans). Wikipedia is no different, except that it has an audit trail: now you can see where and when a specific statement came from. With older media, this is seldom possible.
Back when news outlets and encyclopedia dominated the truth market, this sort of thing happened just as often, and had just as much staying-power.
For example, the famous bathtub hoax was an experiment in deliberately inserting completely made-up facts, without any supporting citations, into a trusted source, and then tracking how far the misinformation went. Even after the author of the hoax publicly fessed up, his fake information lived on unchallenged.
(Yes, I recognize the irony in choosing to link to wikipedia for that information. I figure slashdot can cope.)
How do they know that Streator had no involvement? Just because he wasn't implicated before the Wikipedia edit doesn't mean he wasn't involved. Streator is incommunicado and the identity of the editor is unknown. For all we know it was Streator who made the edits, out of guilt for never getting caught...
There was a recent bit in Wikipedia that Albert Einstein invented the Lorenz SZ40, SZ42A and SZ42B
machines in WWII. Folks need to read more and fix the rubbish instead of arguing.
After Reagan won election in 1980, some bitter staffers started circulating a story that he had stolen the election by making a secret deal with Iran. Ther was no evidence at att, but a staffer wrote a book and then Hollywood made a movie and so the network news shows gobbled it up as part of the book- and movie- related "tours". People like ABC's Ted Koppel did such an interview on his "Nightline" show. This stuff soaked-into the national psyche and now a large number of people believe it (even though the details of the story worked out to be physically impossible). Once the mainstream press has run with something, even if they later drop it, it will still have wormed its way into the culture. Many people who were born after Reagan retired, and who never saw these stories themselves, still have some familiaruty with them and think they are factual.
NBC had a comedianne impersonating Sarah Palin claim she could see Russia from her house. Now MANY Americans are certain Sarah Palin said this.
The US Constitution, a short easy-to-access-and-read source document, NEVER says that black people are 3/5ths of a person. Political activists have injected this into many books and lesson plans, magazine ad web articles and as a result, most people think the US Constitution said that black people were only worth 3/5ths as much as white people. Note: What the Constitution actually said was that "non-free persons" could only be counted as 3/5ths of a person for assigning congressional seats - and at the time it was written there were "non-free" white people as well as black slaves, there were some free blacks who were themselves slave owners, and the free blacks in the northern colonies were counted as full people; the Constitutional clause was NOT tied to skin color.
There are many, many other examples, but I chose these three because there are almost certainly people on Slashdot who have fallen victim to them.
How Journalists Not Checking their Sources Can Attach a Name To a Scandal, 35 Years On
FTFY
Wikipedia never claimed to be a reliable source. It cannot possible be a reliable source, it's a fucking wiki. It's no better a source than an IRC channel. In the best case, a citation on Wikipedia directs you to a source you can check and refer to.
In contrast to most Wikipedia editors, journalists are payed to do their jobs, so we should hold them to a higher standard. Or maybe not? After all, the payed Wikipedia editors are to be trusted the least.
Seems to me Wikipedia is edited by children, biased spiteful children. They'll do a "Speedy Deletion" on you if they simply don't like the person or entity you're writing about, despite having valid references and significant information. They themselves also "vandalize" in areas they think most Wikipedia officials may not notice. Wiki claims there are no designated "editors" or "monitors" in the Wikipedia site. But you just try to add a new article or edit an existing one... At least a couple editors (who were watching) will jump all over you, practically call you names, change your article around (a lot), then even threaten you that you'd "better not violate the site's protocol" again or you'll be banned from making contributions. This has happened to me more than once. Note: My contributions were right on point and inoffensive in every way. (Then they dare to ask us for donations!)