At this very moment, a little girl somewhere is writing a report on the mating rituals of iguanas. At the same time, an unemployed 42 year old man is sitting in a mustard stained t-shirt at his computer with his cat, scratching his balls and making shit up about iguanas. Do you see where this is going?
What happened to trust, people? In this digital age, where pedophiles and scoundrels clog our intertubes, is it too much to ask for some godforsaken truth when it comes to iguana fucking? Inacurate Wikipedia Contributor thinks so. Instead, he takes advantage of the system and corrupts the minds of his fellow man, all in the quest to fill our heads with his phony drivel.
Should you locate this purveyor of misinformation, fill his head with something more substantial, like oh, say, five of your pointiest knuckles.
Note: If said IWC is a representative of the Colbert Nation, please ignore this post.
the problems started once people began to realise the potential of just adding a link there rather than actually contributing to it
That’s an interesting article. I just wondered if you could tell me where to find more info on this topic ?
The lazy bastards who do their research on Wikipedia deserve everything they get. The punch in the face should go to the Wiki-Nazis who constantly delete information because someone dared to update an item under their watch.
I’ll admit to trolling Wikipedia, you can try to punch me in the face, but I warn you, I’m a big ‘un.
I once posted a fantastic story about my old hometown, a sleepy berg in middle Michigan, got into a shooting border war with farmers of the next town over due to roaming cattle in the 1840′s. My sister who still lives in said sleepy berg told me some kids were including the border war story in their middle school reports on the town as factual town history which is how they knew the page had been toyed with.
The look on her face when I told her I was guilty was priceless. Then she laughed for 10 minutes….
[...] to Comments In light of our discussion on the accuracy or Wikipedia today, I thought you might find this post from People Who Deserve It fun and interesting. [...]
Oh, I know, that dissapoints me greatly. I am very upset with the lies and rumors written on Wikipedia.com about my father (God). He’s a great man, not a sinner, and then people just go, and “dis” him. He definately doesn’t deserve that, and anyone who does such a sin deserves to be damned to hell.
Poor little girl! Shame on whomever told her that she could use Wikipedia as source material for her report!
But I must say, the purpose of Wikipedia is to be a quick and convenient source repository for a wide variety of information; that is the beauty of it – not its accuracy – though I think Wikipedia does the best it can by its use of volunteers who track mistaken information and remove it. If a user is looking for thorough facts, a better way to use Wikipedia might be to look at the book and article references posted inside the Wikipedia entry and consult those firsthand for gathering research.
At the same time, I agree that this 42 year old man needs to go get a life and stop ruining the lives of kids looking for shortcuts on their school assignments.
[...] I think our best bet is to try and maintain a sense of humor… sometimes the best remedy to extreme pain is to laugh rather than scream… or a punch to the face. [...]
“If said IWC is a representative of the Colbert Nation, please punch them twice.”
seconding that one
Oh, my. Your post has made me laugh out loud. Especially the image of the man in the mustard-stained shirt with a cat….
Astute social commentary and funny.
I’m afraid that I have to take the other side on this one. When the Encyclopedia Britannica people researched a few hundred entries on Wikipedia they found that “on the average” the information included in the entries was as accurate as many peer reviewed sources. With that being said, I wouldn’t quote Wikipedia as a reference in a paper but it is a good jumping off point to other resources.
“nuckle”
I’m not sure which is funnier: the original post, or God’s comment! I look forward to shortly hearing about God locating and smiting down all the IWCs out there.
God comment is hilarious.
Google Scholar? So we can all become part of one ginormous cloud-computing Borg?? Zach, in five years, you’ll be talking about Gurgle like people have bee talking about Microslob for the last five.
If you really want to screw with Wiki, while Wales continues to ask you for money, forward him all your Nigerian 419 spam e-mails.
I have put inaccurate or silly information on Wikipedia in the past. Generally I only did this on very obscure articles that received no edits or that I created. I feel a bit of guilt about it, but not too much. I honestly, in principle, feel Wikipedia is bad even if ran right. That the nature of the Internet, open forums, and its own mission makes it where its “facts” are merely the consensus of a few hundred teenage boys or Star-Wars fanclub members. People who take this website seriously probably should be reminded it should not be used for school reports or legitimate research except for its use as a link to legitimate research.
Actually that could be an excellent tactic for a teacher struggling with Wikiplagiarism. Assign a paper on iguana mating and stick in some information about iguanas only mating after a mating dance strongly resembling the paso doble. Edit back after the papers are due.
RIP PAUL REISER
Good entry. I too am infuriated by inaccurate Wikipedia entries. The entry on Me is completely filled with tripe.
This is one of my favorite things to do. The best is screwing with medical articles.
That is a really nice mug.
“Innacurate”
LOL
Great site though.
Wikipedia.org is a community of minds. Contributors like you should help wikipedia correct mistakes. Entries in wikipedia are from different people and different walks of life.
People shouldn’t believe in them 100%. People should only believe 1% of it.
I do agree with you on the whole trust thing, and anyone who posts inaccurate stuff to a site like wikipedia solely for the purpose of fooling his fellow man or because they think it’s funny deserves a tasty nuckle sandwich. That said, the purpose of wikipedia is that anyone can update, edit, or add information as it becomes relevant. It has become an important REFERENCE tool that should be used to observe changes in culture and common thought, but it should never be used as a RESEARCH tool or as a primary source. Use the library, or sites like Google Scholar for these purposes. Anyone who sites wikipedia as a primary source for a research paper needs to be punched twice as hard as the a**hole who posts fictitious “facts.
EDIT:
“If said IWC is a representative of the Colbert Nation, please punch them twice.”
He’s the exact reason you can’t cite Wikipedia! What a jerk! Although, occasionally coming across a completely inaccurate fact about Iguana mating could potentially be hilarious, like if he were drunk and just making up words.
I wish I had wikipedia in high school .. all I had was encarta and that thing was a piece of garbage