Irish student's Wikipedia hoax dupes newspapers
May 7, 2009
An Irish student's fake quote on the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia has been used in newspaper obituaries around the world, the Irish Times reported.
An Irish student's fake quote on the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia has been used in newspaper obituaries around the world, the Irish Times reported.
The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died in March.
Shane Fitzgerald, 22, a final-year student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin, told the newspaper he placed the quote on the website as an experiment when doing research on globalisation.
He quoted Oscar-winning composer Jarre as saying, "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life.
"When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear."
The quote was posted on Wikipedia shortly after Jarre's death and later appeared in obituaries in major British, Indian and Australian newspapers.
Fitzgerald told the newspaper he picked Wikipedia because it was something a lot of journalists look at and it can be edited by anyone.
While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone's death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre's life, he said.
Fitzgerald said he was shocked by the result of his experiment.
"I didn't expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised about," he said.
He said the hoax remained undiscovered for weeks until he e-mailed the newspapers that had been deceived to tell them that they had published an inaccurate quote.
The Irish Times said that despite some newspapers removing the quote from their websites or carrying a correction and the fact that it had been dropped by Wikipedia, it remained intact on dozens of blogs, websites and newspapers.
(c) 2009 AFP
3 hours ago
On the other hand it also shows how easy mainstream media poisoning has become.
Right wing = ignorance, lies and stupidity.
Right wing = Spend a lot of tax $ and claim your not.
Seriously though, Wikipedia's accuracy seems to be inversely correlated with the how controversial the subject is. So for political stuff I read it as an editorial but for scientific and historical stuff I take it mostly at face value. If something sounds odd of course I'll check the reference.
Wiki has enough problems with people who believe their opinion constitutes fact, primarily the left and the right who don't seem to realize the are opposite sides on the same turd sniveling the other end stinks
A majority of vandals have the attitude: "Yeah, try and stop me." But the next largest group have somehow convinced themselves that they are doing an "experiment". Bullshit. An experiment is testing a hypothesis, not testing Wikipedia's defenses. These people are just liars who don't expect to be taken to account for falsifying information. It's "Cops and Robbers" time, and they are enjoying their momentary role as criminals. Sure, often little harm is done. But multiply that times 10,000 a day, and suddenly there are news reports about how unreliable Wikipedia is.
They aren't innocent, they are junior criminals.
There are exceptions, for example, one particular Wiki editor I could name who seems to me to be suffering from a diagnosable personality disorder. Or people who genuinely think it's just good fun. But a university student should know better.