Stephen Colbert demonstrates what we all know, that Wikipedia can be very unreliable.
The Daily Show alum Stephen Colbert decided to poke fun at Wikipedia recently <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060801/0128222.shtml>:
“Stephen Colbert decided to take on Wikipedia tonight, and discuss his vision for a new ‘Wikiality,’ where the masses create the facts they want to believe in. And did they ever. At the conclusion of the amusing segment, Colbert instructs his audience to find the Wikipedia entry on elephants, and edit it to say that ‘the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months.’ Not surprisingly, plenty of people went to either make the edit, or to see if had been made.”
According to the Freakonomics Blog <http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2006/08/23/mark-cubans-wikipedia-trouble/>, Mark Cuban is also having trouble with Wikipedia <http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000350073849/>.
So what does Wikipedia do when it experiences vandalism? Disables the “wiki” part (at least for anonymous users). If you curious, this search on Google shows some of the pages that are currently offline on Wikipedia due to vandalism <http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&domains=en.wikipedia.org&q=%22editing+of+this+article+by+anonymous%22+&btnG=Search&sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org>.
Add “elephant” to see the Colbert Wikiality effect.
