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After Sarah Palin’s multiple Paul Revere retellings, each one stupider than the last, her supporters tried to REVISE THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE so that it made her sound right. Incredible! Now Stephen Colbert has asked his viewers to help fight this good fight.
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Honestly, this might be the best birthday present that the universe could gift me. Come on, Michelle Bachmann, step it up! I need at least 10% more nuttiness to make this schadenfreude cake perfect!
Is it your birthday? It’s my birthday too! And also, in addition to, Liam Neesen, Bill Hader, Dean Martin, Prince, and Paul Gauguin! And Anna Kournikova! Woot woot! Party over here!
Happy birthday(s), us!
Let’s ring those bells to warn the British about your birthdays!
This is beautiful. I love America!
I actually am seriously concerned with how people use Wikipedia. To be sure, it is a fantastic tool. It used to be that people would take the information with a grain of salt due to the knowledge that anyone could edit it. But for some reason, we now think that there are controls put in place to ensure the validity/reliability of the information which is just patently false.
And I am not immune. For example, i have been having a bit of trouble sleeping lately and i read on wikipedia that having a beer before bed is “sleep-promoting by increasing total sleep time and reducing awakenings during the night”. It also was referenced! so i tried it out, and sure enough it was sleep UNpromoting. I looked at the source and it was a paper that studied six people. Surely the stakes are criminally low here, but think of the conzequencez!
And as long as i’m ranting, editing is hard. I once tried to edit Soulja Boy’s page because it said he won a Nickolodeon Teen Choice Award in a year that he actually had NOT. The page was locked and i could not do it. This frustration led me to never make another attempt at editing and contributing to the knowledge base ever again. And this was three years ago. Think of the conzequencez!
you had me until you admitted you knew of Soulja Boy’s history at the Teen Choice Awards
Well, in this case, if you read the Wiki Revision History page (what a perfect name!) the main guy who was trying to change the page kept attempting to seriously pervert Wiki’s rules. He kept claiming that, because the LA Times is a reputable source, and they quoted Sarah Palin, that makes them a suitable reference for altering the facts of Paul Revere’s story. So, by that logic, if the LA Times interviews Howard Camping, the Wiki entry on the Earth could be altered to include an end date of this October (or May, or 1994, or what have you). Obviously no paper only quotes statements they know to be factually accurate. And any reasonable person would see that the paper can be used as a reference for Palin saying it, but not for it being actual historical fact.
Anyway, people seemed to jump on him pretty quickly. And it’s always best to check your references on Wiki if you’re looking for information of any importance at all.
I don’t remember the article (sadly), but I do remember a case where a wikipedia entry which cited a newspaper article which cited that very same wikipedia entry. “WHAAAAAAA?!!” I remember thinking from my computer. “But that means all information is just re-digestion of other information and nothing can ever truly be known!”
I was in a coma for 6 years after that. Only the first sentence of this story is true.
One time I found this on Wikipedia:
I once made one change to Wikipedia. Under “Dunbar” (disambiguation), I wrote “dunbar from the real world” to prove to my boyfriend that things were in place to keep that sort of thing from happening.
It went through.
It remained in place under no particular heading. Today is the first time in years I’ve checked the page and it has not been there. RIP my Wiki edit. And probably Dunbar too, while we’re at it.
In my defense, i hadn’t come in with foreknowledge. I just read it, it struck me, I sleuthed, and then I failed. Shameful nonetheless
oops, supposed to be a reply to eagle eyed. zoinks!