# How Wikipedia vandalism, or whimsy, can become "truth" **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 28, 2014, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754 "2014-08-28T15:14:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2014, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754/21 "2014-09-01T19:34:17Z")
And yet… > **[Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica](https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/)** > > The journal Nature says the open-access encyclopedia is about as accurate as the old standby. ---
**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2014, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754/22 "2014-09-01T20:42:01Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Eh, why not. It’s been long enough. It was this line I added. > > [Winston Churchill (novelist) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_(novelist)) Yes, I would say that [eight years](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Winston_Churchill_%28novelist%29&diff=prev&oldid=64120177) is certainly long enough to extract whatever amusement there is to be had from such a joke. In that time, have you had any urge to go back and correct the article? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2014, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754/23 "2014-09-01T20:49:15Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > [xkcd: Citogenesis](http://xkcd.com/978/) Randall Munroe is way off base on that one. _Everyone_ knows Steven Chu invented the Pause|Break key, not the Scroll Lock key. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754/24 "2014-09-02T00:31:38Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > 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. I remember a thread I was in on this board. This was back around 1999 before Wikipedia was a thing. I don’t remember what the topic we were debating was. But I do recall that at one point in the argument I cited the fact that Grover Cleveland had won the 1892 election by a margin of so many votes. And the person I was debating said I was wrong - Cleveland had won the election but his margin of victory was about fifty thousand votes off from what I had said. So I responded that I had looked it up and cited the almanac I got my numbers from. And then the other poster said the same thing and cited the almanac he had gotten his figures from. And it was disconcerting to both of us to realize these two almanacs - both of which were regarded as credible reference works - were given us significantly different results for the election. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754/25 "2014-09-02T01:36:46Z")
> [@Number](#): > > In that time, have you had any urge to go back and correct the article? Not really. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754/26 "2014-09-02T01:55:30Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > And yet… > > [http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038\_3-5997332.html](http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html) [A lie told often enough becomes the truth.](http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/02/16/wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/) > [@](#): > > Few observers were astute enough to note, as The Register’s Andrew Orlowski did, that restricting the comparison to hard science articles was what “gave the free-for-all web site a fighting chance – as it excluded the rambling garbage and self-indulgence that constitute much of the wannabe encyclopedia’s social science and culture entries”. Another notable exception was Bill Thompson, writing for the BBC, who noted Wikipedia’s problems in “contentious areas such as politics, religion or biography”, and how easily Wikipedia can “be undermined through malice or ignorance thanks to its open architecture”. > [@](#): > > Carr also established that the Nature “study” was not actually an expert-written research article of the type that built the reputation of Nature, but a non-peer-reviewed piece of news journalism (a fact he confirmed with the piece’s author, Jim Giles). > [@](#): > > In effect, it considered a sprawling, badly organised jumble of facts to be as valuable as a masterfully written and easy-to-understand introduction to a topic by a world-renowned scholar. The results are not the same. Even so, Nature found that Wikipedia contained about a third more inaccuracies than Britannica. (This doesn’t stop some writers going the whole hog and claiming that Nature found Wikipedia to be more reliable than Britannica. It’s stunning, really, how memes morph on the internet.) > > The reality: a site riddled with hoaxes, vandalism, PR manipulation and anonymous defamation ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754/27 "2014-09-02T11:40:11Z")
Asimov once wrote one of his science columns about a solubility constant that someone lost a decimal place on in the mid 18th century and all the books and the Chemical Rubber Handbook reported as 10 times the actual solubility. So it can happen. But presumably it wasn’t done as a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2014, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754/28 "2014-09-03T23:03:32Z")
Does this have any relationship to the endochronic properties of resublimated thiotimoline ?🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wikipedia-vandalism-or-whimsy-can-become-truth/696754.md?page=1)