I happened to be doing some general reading up on the Apocalypse for something I’m working on (how’s that for an unsettling hint) and just for laughs I decided to check Wikipedia. Here’s what it said, and I quote:
The End of the World
It is thought that in the year 2012 A.D. Bruce Lee will rise up from the dead and engage in an epic battle with Chuck Norris destroying the planet and all its inhabitants in the process.
Actually, if that were a movie, I’d go see it.
PAD
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My defense of wikipedia’s general trustworthiness is that anyone flamboyant enough to change it is going to make it obvious, like in your example. Some day, I’d like to see an excerpt where some passive-aggressive supervillain changed the “facts” so subtly as to really fool people with something.
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That being said, when I was teaching English, it was by no means an acceptable source for papers. I did encourage my students to use it as a springboard, however, and many found it useful to get them started, if nothing else.
The obvious joke entries aren’t the problem with WikiP’s reliability; it’s the more subtle problems. For example, I was looking at the page on the 1997 South-East Asian crisis recently, and read the part of “former Prime-Minister” Thaksin Shinawatra’s role in currency speculation.
Thaksin is, in fact, a former Prime-Minister, and he and his cronies did have a part to play in currency speculation–but he didn’t become PM (and therefore former PM) until much later. I don’t know if that should be labeled as “wrong information” or just “poor editing”, but either way, I’ll bet that the wording will cause readers to assume that Thaksin was a former prime-minister in 1997, when that’s just not the case.
I also tell students it’s not allowed as a source in and of itself, but note it as a good place to jump start the research process.
My money’s on Bruce.
Hmmm, which one is the force of light and which is the force of darkness?
Kip
Well, obviously since in “Return of the Dragon” Bruce played the good guy, and Chuck played the bad guy…
Chuck is the bad guy. Trust me.
heheheheheheheheeeee.
Brilliant.
Have you been researching any John Hagee for your Apocalypse work? He’s pretty scary. I think he inspired the food insurance movement.
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You should turn it into a script or at least maybe make it a dream sequence in one of your books.
that made me chuckle
Oh yeah? Well it made me Brucele.(just wanted to give equal time to both candidates)
Just checked and it’s been changed but not corrected per se. Now it says “P.S. the world will not end by Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee or no reason at all in 2012 uless (sic) God wants it to you stupid steriotypicals.”
Someone should add, “I know you are, but what am I?”
Speaking of Bruce Lee, I was recently explaining to some kid (relatively speaking) about the Green Hornet. He showed little interest until I told him that Bruce Lee played the Hornet’s sidekick on television. Hoo boy, did the interest level suddenly perk up!
So I guess you’ve never seen RETURN OF THE DRAGON?
That fight was awesome (especially because I like seeing Chuck Norris lose), but it didn’t destroy any planets.
Sure, but that wasn’t a film relating to the apocalypse.
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Plus Bruce Lee was alive when it was filmed. A new movie about him returning from the dead would be rather challenging.
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PAD
“Bruce Lee was alive when it was filmed.”
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Not as alive as you think…
I suppose this Lee-Norris battle could make its way onto SUPERNATURAL at some point…
What, did I get the year wrong, or something?
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Dammit, Peter, I’m doing my best!!!
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Seriously, looking through that article’s edit history shows that it’s been the target of lots of vandalism lately. I personally got a kick out of the October 12 edit addition mentioning Justin Bieber’s nail polish.
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Justin D. Hebert: My defense of wikipedia’s general trustworthiness is that anyone flamboyant enough to change it is going to make it obvious, like in your example. Some day, I’d like to see an excerpt where some passive-aggressive supervillain changed the “facts” so subtly as to really fool people with something.
Luigi Novi: Look up “Seigenthaler incident”.
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Try most dates of birth.
But then Bruce Campbell will show up, smack ’em both down, and invite everyone to live on his chin.
You all have it wrong…..Up-Chuck Norris will defeat Bruce Lee but then Branden Lee will rise and deliver sweet justice on Chuck then he will point out that we have been looking at the date wrong, its really 2102 that the world will end thus leaving us with another 90 years of hand-wringing over the coming Apocalypse.
Ditto to what a few others are saying about wikipedia being a good starting place. I’m working on my library sciences degree, and my classmates and professors both have agreed that it’s a solid place to glean sources from.
Thirded, or fourthed, or … well, whatever number we’re up to. My students know that they can’t cite Wiki (much less plagiarize from it, which has occasionally happened with the Exceptionally Clueless), but I do tell them that it’s a good place to start looking for sources.
Wait…I swear I heard the same thing on Glen Beck!
I can’t take Wikipedia seriously anymore. There is NO listing whatsoever for J.D. Polson, nor his famous Liberty Head dime, nor the Dillogate Affair that failed to bring him down.
Then why don’t you write them, and add to the encyclopedia?
What, and lose the chance to complain about it?
Ah, yes: write for Wikipedia so that you article can be subjected to vandalism or, at the opposite end of the pole, deletion.
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Seems to me that writing for Wikipedia offers a unique opportunity to become both part of the solution and part of the problem.
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PAD
And yet, that line about Bruce lee and Chuck Norris, was only on the site for 7 hours, before it was identified as vandalism and removed.
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Like it or not, study after study has shown that wikipedia is at least as good, if not more reliable than alternatives like Britannica.
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http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
I was unaware that Britannica could be hacked into and changed by random vandals.
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PAD
That one cuts both ways, PAD. Once you buy a set of Britannicas, the mistakes that are in it will never be edited out.
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And on Wiki once they’re edited out they’re put back in two days later.
Note, however, that the “study” in question was not peer-reviewed, and in fact may or may not be accurate. It gets cited a lot by people wanting to defend Wikipedia, though…
Jason, vandalism isn’t a mistake. There is no such thing as a perfect resource, but I doubt Britannica has a considerable number of vandalizing incidents.
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PAD
In Britannicas case, it isn’t vandalism, so much as human error. But that’s the point. The mistakes creep in, and don’t get edited out in a timely fashion.
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Wikipedia, for all its many faults, has a pretty good record when it comes to dealing with vandalism.
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If you find something odd in a wikipedia page, you can, for example
1) Wait and see if the odd thing gets removed (very quickly)
2) Check the history of the page, and see when the odd thing was added. If it is a recent addition, it may be suspect. (As in, added within the last 48 hours)
3) Check who wrote the odd thing (again, via the page history.) If it wasn’t a registered user, or if that users contributions to wikipedia are nothing but vandalism additions, you know where you stand.
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In a world where even the New York Times can on rare occasions be duped into running stories from the Weekly World News, we could all do with learning how to double check our sources.
I tend to agree with the above and I don’t think any sane person believes the Bible mentions and modern day celebrity by name.
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But there’s a more subtle form of vanadalism that was mentioned on another site (Who Watches the Watchers) that worries me a bit more: a comic book supherhero/villain has no known real name as yet. Person A decides to give the character a real name, maybe based on a friend/relative on Wikipedia; alter egos like Otto Octavius are rarer these days sop a normal sounding name can go undetected awhile. Person B who runs a comic book fan site sees the false info and puts it in their own character bio. The false info is removed from Wikipedia but not the other site. Person C visits Wikipedia, notices that there is info from the other site that is not on Wikipedia, and puts it back in.
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In this case the vandalism was only intended by Person A. Persons B & C were just trying to be helpful.
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Again, I think in the long run Wikipedia is more useful than not, but it’s the subtler vandalism that can do the most damage,not the obvious joke type. Speaking of which the Lee/Norris saga in the entry seems to be over.
Wikipedia has a good record when it comes to vandalism? Not from my personal experience. I’ve found stuff that was wrong and clearly vandalised, and when I checked the history to find out when and where it was added (so I can then see what other vandalism the poster did, since they rarely only vandalise one page), I’ve discovered several times that the vandalism has sat unchallenged for three or four years.
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On the other hand, when I have made edits myself to stuff that wasn’t vandalised, just in error, I regularly find people swoop in to undo my edits, because they are convinced they know better. Even before I got sickened of Wikipedia, I rarely edited – I know I am not an expert in many fields, so I hesitate to amend stuff unless I am sure I am correct. So the edits I made where ones I was certain of, but self-appointed experts would come in and remove them, ignoring requests to discuss things in the talk page, dismissing the evidence and even citations I listed with “I know I am right.” That’s not an exaggeration – when I amended a comment about events depicted in a comic Tom Brevoort had edited, I cited Tom Brevoort’s own, very clear and specific comments regarding the issue and events therein, taken from Tom’s Blog at Marvel.com. My edit was swiftly undone, and the poster, when I asked why, responded that Tom Brevoort probably didn’t know what he was talking about, and that I needed to cite a more reliable site (just to be clear, this was Tom’s blog, not the Marvel.com wiki, which suffers the same lack of reliability of any wiki).