How Wikipedia vandalism, or whimsy, can become "truth"

[Elendil_s_Heir]

A fascinating New Yorker article, I thought: How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark | The New Yorker

[scabpicker]

Simultaneously terrifying and delightful, that’s rare.

[TheSeaOtter]

“I reject your reality, and substitute my own!”

[RivkahChaya]

xkcd: Citogenesis

[Dewey_Finn]

Damn. I’m really tempted to add my own edit to Wikipedia, just to see if I can match the persistence of his edit.

[Yllaria]

Neil Gamain had a blog entry with a similar example.

I followed a link on, um, something in American Gods, to its Wikipedia entry. And read an entry about something that I’d made up (because it fitted, because it worked, and because I didn’t think anyone would mind) that cited a reference book that talked about the thing I made up. The reference book was written some years after American Gods was published, and the person who wrote the reference book has obviously cribbed a little information from American Gods.

The last time, some years ago, I’d checked the Wikipedia entry, it was accurate, and noted that the thing in question had started in American Gods. Now all reference to me and to American Gods has gone. It now has, after all, a reference book link. And something that I made up has become, to all intents and purposes, a fact.

Since he is not specific about which wikiality fact it was, there’s no way to know if it has proliferated.

[furryman]

Wow! And I thought urban legends were bad enough.

[Chronos]

Could this be fixed by a change in Wikipedia policy? I’m thinking maybe a requirement that all cites be dated, and that a cite for a statement must predate the edit that added the statement.

[DingoelGringo]

I have two brothers who both enjoy inventing stuff to post on Wikipedia. One with a religious bent and the other on anything at all. Some of it gets removed such as his statement that Portland cement came from Portland Maine, but never form Portland Oregon. But he has done a dozen or more fantasy posts and says with a laugh that most of them are still there.

[BigT]

@Chronos

Could this be fixed by a change in Wikipedia policy? I’m thinking maybe a requirement that all cites be dated, and that a cite for a statement must predate the edit that added the statement.

All cites are dated, both by when you find them and when they were published. And proving the the citation postdates the claim is a valid argument to say a cite is invalid.

So I would say no.

[Ale]

This may be the plot for Umberto Eco’s next book.

[Captain_Amazing]

Honestly, I’ve done this. About 8 years ago, maybe, now, I introduced a fact I invented in a wikipedia article, and now it seems to be fairly well entrenched on the internet, at least.

[AskNott]

In the case of Kardashianic quasi-celebrities, all dates are cited, not the other way around.

[Little_Nemo]

Why assume this is a phenomena unique to Wikipedia? Maybe we should instead assume it’s as common in all reference works as we’re discovering it is in Wikipedia.

[septimus]

I tried this 4 years ago when SDMB was playing Mornington Crescent, whimsically making a temporary change to the page of an obscure mathematician.

@septimus

These mathematicians do enjoy their flights of fancy. I’ve no idea whether the analysis was actually correct or not, but the work did specifically assume that stations were configured into a Monster Group topology. (Discussion of this restriction was relegated to the end-notes.) The London Underground will need to expand quite a bit before it has enough stations to populate the Monster Group.

As you can see from his wiki page, Thorold Gosset led the way in solving MC for special topologies. He went undefeated for 219 games (a record which, AFAIK, still stands) during that era when the Underground had exactly 120 stations and was instrumental in the expansion to 240 stations (an expansion which of course overshot to lamentable consequences).

As to the game presently in progress here, I must say some of the gambits and ploys have been quite impressive. There are several of you who would feel quite at home in our Tuesday games at Bethlem Hospital.

But within half an hour the change was flagged “citation needed”; 24 hours later it was gone. I’ve doctored the first URL in the above quote to point to the fake page:

… He was especially noted for his theoretical work with Mornington Crescent (game)…
Gosset’s results went largely unnoticed for many years, with the exception of MC afficionados for whom his “Mornington Crescent on the Dodecaplex” is especially remembered.

[The_Great_Unwashed]

@Captain_Amazing

Honestly, I’ve done this. About 8 years ago, maybe, now, I introduced a fact I invented in a wikipedia article, and now it seems to be fairly well entrenched on the internet, at least.

In the interests of fighting ignorance, care to share?

[Ace309]

@Captain_Amazing

Honestly, I’ve done this. About 8 years ago, maybe, now, I introduced a fact I invented in a wikipedia article, and now it seems to be fairly well entrenched on the internet, at least.

In the interests of amusing me, care to share?

[The_Great_Unwashed]

That too!

[Captain_Amazing]

@Ace309

In the interests of amusing me, care to share?

Eh, why not. It’s been long enough. It was this line I added.

Winston Churchill (novelist)

Churchill wrote in the naturalist style of literature, and some have called him the most influential of the American naturalists.

[Colibri]

@Little_Nemo

Why assume this is a phenomena unique to Wikipedia? Maybe we should instead assume it’s as common in all reference works as we’re discovering it is in Wikipedia.

Because Wikipedia is very different than printed reference works. Printed reference works, at least reputable ones, were more carefully researched, edited, and fact-checked than Wiki is. No doubt some made-up facts have gotten in to standard works, but there’s no reason to believe it would have been as common as it is in Wiki.