And, dammit - deleted pictures don't work at webcite - 30 seconds of my life wasted archiving that.Jim wrote:greyed.out.fields wrote:Picture may be deleted soon, so view it while it still exists...- http://www.webcitation.org/6P8iS70DR
====Extinction====
The last remaining Triceratops was shot dead by Steven Spielberg on 1993 to be used as a prop for the movie "Jurassic Park".
And the reverting editor's edit summary: "Highly dubious, unsourced." No, really...Captain Occam wrote:This From the Triceratops (T-H-L) article:
====Extinction====
The last remaining Triceratops was shot dead by Steven Spielberg on 1993 to be used as a prop for the movie "Jurassic Park".
Sloppy vandal. He should have added a "source".Ferahgo wrote:And the reverting editor's edit summary: "Highly dubious, unsourced." No, really...Captain Occam wrote:This From the Triceratops (T-H-L) article:
====Extinction====
The last remaining Triceratops was shot dead by Steven Spielberg on 1993 to be used as a prop for the movie "Jurassic Park".
Oh yeah?Ferahgo wrote:And the reverting editor's edit summary: "Highly dubious, unsourced." No, really...Captain Occam wrote:This From the Triceratops (T-H-L) article:
====Extinction====
The last remaining Triceratops was shot dead by Steven Spielberg on 1993 to be used as a prop for the movie "Jurassic Park".
What makes this edit especially bizarre is that it actually displays some paleontological knowledge. Cedarosaurus is indeed a sauropod dinosaur found in the same formation as Utahraptor, and it's also correct that nobody has ever found an intact Utahraptor pelvis.Nearly every single pelvic bone belonging to a Utahraptor has been found shattered into thousands of shards. The most possible scenario happens to be Utahraptors were frequently victims of rape. The culprits, most likely were the Cedarosaurus'. They were a species of notorious nymphomanics. The female sauropods would act as bait for the raptors, then during the attack, the males would surprise them ramming their enormous penises into the attackers' cloacas. The shear force would shatter the pelvis in a single slam. The raptors would then be helpless without motion, leaving them as the sauropods' sex slaves. They would last about a week before the nearly constant forced intercourse had the raptors die of exhaustion.
That's funnier than the vandalism.Ferahgo wrote:And the reverting editor's edit summary: "Highly dubious, unsourced." No, really...Captain Occam wrote:This From the Triceratops (T-H-L) article:
====Extinction====
The last remaining Triceratops was shot dead by Steven Spielberg on 1993 to be used as a prop for the movie "Jurassic Park".
Subtle vandalism is the sort usually caught by the sort of Wikipedia editor that is entirely replaceable, according to Marc Andre Pelletier (Coren):thekohser wrote:There's an entire paragraph that's a hoax, which has lasted over four months on an article that has been viewed over 40,000 times without anyone removing it. Additional humorousness is that I pointed out this hoax to over 10 people, and none of them bothered to remove it, either.
:always:
(emphasis added)[Wikimedia-l] Interest in a community strategic planning meeting?
Marc A. Pelletier
Mon Jul 14 17:58:30 UTC 2014
On 07/14/2014 10:39 AM, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
> I still
> believe, that the success of English Wikipedia hinges on the ability of the
> community to generate content, and that that's the absolutely most
> important part of English Wikipedia - all else, including consumption by
> end users - follows from that.
I don't believe that's where the value lies. While I am certain we have
a number of contributors who write for the sake of writing; ultimately
we are *all* beholden to the readers. Collecting the world's knowledge
and making it available only has value insofar as it is, in fact, used
as such.
The servers running, the editors editing, the coders coding are all
necessary components but all, in the end, subservient to the actual
objective of serving the readers. Everything else is replacable.
In my long stint on the meta-side of the biggest project (and keeping
abreast of what goes on elsewhere) I saw a very great deal of
self-important navel gazing, but very little actual consideration that
the "community" (if there is such a thing) is only a means to the actual
end. The WMF certainly does not do everything perfectly, but at the
very least it actually /attempts/ to keep an eye on the prize.
-- Marc
Risker (T-C-L) seems to share Coren's view that the editors can go fuck themselves. From Jimbotalk:mac wrote:[...]
Subtle vandalism is the sort usually caught by the sort of Wikipedia editor that is entirely replaceable, according to Marc Andre Pelletier (Coren):
(emphasis added)[Wikimedia-l] Interest in a community strategic planning meeting?
Marc A. Pelletier
Mon Jul 14 17:58:30 UTC 2014
On 07/14/2014 10:39 AM, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
> I still
> believe, that the success of English Wikipedia hinges on the ability of the
> community to generate content, and that that's the absolutely most
> important part of English Wikipedia - all else, including consumption by
> end users - follows from that.
I don't believe that's where the value lies. While I am certain we have
a number of contributors who write for the sake of writing; ultimately
we are *all* beholden to the readers. Collecting the world's knowledge
and making it available only has value insofar as it is, in fact, used
as such.
The servers running, the editors editing, the coders coding are all
necessary components but all, in the end, subservient to the actual
objective of serving the readers. Everything else is replacable.
In my long stint on the meta-side of the biggest project (and keeping
abreast of what goes on elsewhere) I saw a very great deal of
self-important navel gazing, but very little actual consideration that
the "community" (if there is such a thing) is only a means to the actual
end. The WMF certainly does not do everything perfectly, but at the
very least it actually /attempts/ to keep an eye on the prize.
-- Marc
By "eye on the prize", ... oh never mind.
(edited to hell and back)
Did she get hit in the head with a coconut? What would "the readers" see if not for the editors?Interesting point. The biggest asset is probably the readers, whose actions are what makes Wikipedia a top-5 google-hit for almost every subject; the only role of the editors in that is the creation of the page in the first place. Risker (talk) 01:24, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Former WPO members Deltahedron (T-C-L) and Eric Corbett called her out:Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.
Risker suggests that the "biggest asset is probably the readers": actually, I'm pretty sure it's the encyclopaedia, which is what we are building here -- "the only role of the editors in that is the creation": yes, and quite an important one I would have said. Deltahedron (talk) 17:25, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Quite. That was a rather strange and very revealing thing for Risker to have said. Eric Corbett 14:14, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
Well, it's about time. This was not the first, and not even the second time I've pulled the fake radio station prank, either!thekohser wrote:There's an entire paragraph that's a hoax, which has lasted over four months on an article that has been viewed over 40,000 times without anyone removing it. Additional humorousness is that I pointed out this hoax to over 10 people, and none of them bothered to remove it, either.
I expected no less. The cracks in the edifice of the Mighty Wiki-Wurlitzer are widening.mac wrote:Risker (T-C-L) seems to share Coren's view that the editors can go fuck themselves. From Jimbotalk:Subtle vandalism is the sort usually caught by the sort of Wikipedia editor that is entirely replaceable, according to Marc Andre Pelletier (Coren):(emphasis added)[Wikimedia-l] Interest in a community strategic planning meeting?
Marc A. Pelletier
Mon Jul 14 17:58:30 UTC 2014
On 07/14/2014 10:39 AM, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
> I still
> believe, that the success of English Wikipedia hinges on the ability of the
> community to generate content, and that that's the absolutely most
> important part of English Wikipedia - all else, including consumption by
> end users - follows from that.
I don't believe that's where the value lies. While I am certain we have
a number of contributors who write for the sake of writing; ultimately
we are *all* beholden to the readers. Collecting the world's knowledge
and making it available only has value insofar as it is, in fact, used
as such.
The servers running, the editors editing, the coders coding are all
necessary components but all, in the end, subservient to the actual
objective of serving the readers. Everything else is replacable.
In my long stint on the meta-side of the biggest project (and keeping
abreast of what goes on elsewhere) I saw a very great deal of
self-important navel gazing, but very little actual consideration that
the "community" (if there is such a thing) is only a means to the actual
end. The WMF certainly does not do everything perfectly, but at the
very least it actually /attempts/ to keep an eye on the prize.
-- MarcInteresting point. The biggest asset is probably the readers, whose actions are what makes Wikipedia a top-5 google-hit for almost every subject; the only role of the editors in that is the creation of the page in the first place. Risker (talk) 01:24, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Risker has no idea how the Google algorithm works. But what this quote shows is how obsessed top Wikipedians are with Google ranking and page hits. Those are their criteria for success, not quality of articles.Interesting point. The biggest asset is probably the readers, whose actions are what makes Wikipedia a top-5 google-hit for almost every subject; the only role of the editors in that is the creation of the page in the first place. Risker (talk) 01:24, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
...I wrote that Amelia Bedelia edit in 2009, with my best friend Evan during our sophomore year of college. As he recalled when I called him later that evening, “we were stoned out of our minds” and had just come from the McDonald’s drive-thru to get chicken selects when we decided to edit Wikipedia pages for various semi-obscure children’s book authors.
...But given the tone of the writing—"her vast collection of hats, notorious for their extensive plumage” is about as snarky as snarky can get—and the fact that Evan and I didn’t even cite a source, why would no one see any red flags? How could the Amelia Bedelia Cameroon myth go unedited or unquestioned for so long—if not by Amelia Bedelia’s readers, by Parish himself, who is still alive and well and writing books for the Amelia Bedelia series?
And that's not all. It was posted on Metafilter, and people started posting their own accounts of WP hoaxing.thekohser wrote:I accidentally started a Wikipedia hoax
By EJ Dickson on July 29, 2014 (Daily Dot)
My colleagues at a previous job pulled a prank on an overseas visitor to our site once. They knew where they were staying, and so created the Wikipedia entry for the place, saying that the place was haunted.
They specifically mentioned the months while the visitor would be there as being prime time for ghostly activity (check the first version of the page).
If you visit the relevant page now (linked above), the claims for the haunting are still there, but the story has been fleshed out and the time period for peak haunting has been removed.
I know a guy who writes for MAD Magazine. His initial Wikipedia entry was created back in 2004, and back then he thought the whole idea of him having a Wikipedia entry was completely ridiculous. So sometimes, to amuse himself, he'd log on and make outrageous changes to the article to see how long it took someone to notice.
But he was posting obviously-fake things - like how he is known for his sardonic use of ampersands, or that he was born in Italy in 1853, or that he invented the steam-powered air hockey table, or that portions of his left buttock are on display in the Smithsonian. After a while, Wikipedia started keeping a close eye on things; but even if they stayed up a while, nothing he posted would ever get repeated without someone saying, "......wait. Can we research this?"
Plus:My edit that Arnold Schwarzenegger became very interested in the mythology of Robert Howard's Conan and now worshiped Crom did not last long.
Which is too bad. The world would be a better place if more people knew the riddle of steel.
And finally, as one of the commentors noted, today that asshole Bearian decided to block the IP address that did this -- in January 2009. That's Wikipedia, closing the barn door after all the animals have run off.I can't see why anybody's particularly surprised that Wikipedia contains completely baseless information like this. Wikipedia is a subculture that privileges tech geeks who can assimilate its rules, lingo, and Web formatting style over people who have accurate knowledge of something. Excessive adherence to the "no original research" rule even makes it worse.
Sheffield Wednesday (T-H-L) is, for those who don't know, the name of a football club in the north of England, and very unlikely to be an actual alternative nickname for an rapper from Houston, Texas. Yet of course, when we go to Google now, we get: linkStayve Jerome Thomas (born September 8, 1980),[1] better known as Slim Thug, Boss Hogg or Sheffield Wednesday...
Inserted just over two years ago by an IP: linkAL1 wrote:Don't really know how "creative" this is, but it's good to see that longtime users/admins (in some cases), among them Materialscientist (T-C-L) (of course) and MONGO (T-C-L), have seen fit to rack up edit counts and anti-vandalism points on the page of rapper Slim Thug (T-H-L), all while the first sentence of the article has read, for almost exactly two years now (since diff):Sheffield Wednesday (T-H-L) is, for those who don't know, the name of a football club in the north of England, and very unlikely to be an actual alternative nickname for an rapper from Houston, Texas. Yet of course, when we go to Google now, we get: linkStayve Jerome Thomas (born September 8, 1980),[1] better known as Slim Thug, Boss Hogg or Sheffield Wednesday...
I remember people worrying that the transition of various forms of data to Wikidata would present a colossal magnet for vandals wanting to affect numerous sites at once, and that it would be hard to police. They were right.Mason wrote:For the past five months, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was "also known as" Adolf Hitler on Wikidata.
Wikidata needs new change patrollers just as much as, probably more than, Wikipedia itself.Hex wrote:I remember people worrying that the transition of various forms of data to Wikidata would present a colossal magnet for vandals wanting to affect numerous sites at once, and that it would be hard to police. They were right.Mason wrote:For the past five months, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was "also known as" Adolf Hitler on Wikidata.
The Swami Vigilant graciously accepts your accolades.Hex wrote:I remember people worrying that the transition of various forms of data to Wikidata would present a colossal magnet for vandals wanting to affect numerous sites at once, and that it would be hard to police. They were right.Mason wrote:For the past five months, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was "also known as" Adolf Hitler on Wikidata.
Bu, bu, bu that's not fun work!Poetlister wrote:Wikidata needs new change patrollers just as much as, probably more than, Wikipedia itself.Hex wrote:I remember people worrying that the transition of various forms of data to Wikidata would present a colossal magnet for vandals wanting to affect numerous sites at once, and that it would be hard to police. They were right.Mason wrote:For the past five months, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was "also known as" Adolf Hitler on Wikidata.
Libertarians. The Von Mises Institute and related bodies have a recurring line that FDR was a fascist.Mason wrote:For the past five months, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was "also known as" Adolf Hitler on Wikidata.
Oliver claims "I am a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation", hence he is not their employee.
Ha!Poetlister wrote:Oliver claims "I am a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation", hence he is not their employee.
That's been there for two weeks. It had previously been in her bio for four years, referenced to a tumblr blog, until it was reverted by Cool Hand Luke in May 2014.JoLynn Garnes has no middle name. She is fascinated by China, Mormons, weather, and cuttlefish. She loves kitties. She shares a birthday with Adolf Hitler, and possibly with Muhammad. She has been described as an "obnoxious woman-hating man-hater with the body of a starved ethiopian WNBA player." Few people know that JoLynn Garnes actually coined the street expression "uh, uh, strawberries," which is now a common colloquialism among Azerbaijani youth.
The last time I checked, "sorpresa" is an Italian word, not a French word (the correct French word is "surprise"). Earlier revisions stated it as Italian.Kinder Surprise, also known as a Kinder Egg or Kinder Joy or, in the original French, Kinder Sorpresa, is a candy manufactured by Italian company Ferrero. Originally intended for children, it is also popular with adult collectors and has the form of a chocolate egg containing a small toy, often requiring assembly.
The amusing thing is, someone also vandalized the company's nationality to say French as well. A user came in and fixed that, but completely missed the claim that sorpresa was French. It's Spanish and Italian, but not French.Johnny Au wrote:Kinder Surprise (T-H-L)The last time I checked, "sorpresa" is an Italian word, not a French word (the correct French word is "surprise"). Earlier revisions stated it as Italian.Kinder Surprise, also known as a Kinder Egg or Kinder Joy or, in the original French, Kinder Sorpresa, is a candy manufactured by Italian company Ferrero. Originally intended for children, it is also popular with adult collectors and has the form of a chocolate egg containing a small toy, often requiring assembly.
Maybe that's an incredibly subtle piece of vandalism; introduce two errors with a bad hand account and correct one of them with an apparently "good hand" one. Any casual patroller will think that the vandalism is fixed. I've certainly seen that ploy used elsewhere.Lukeno94 wrote:why did that user not just check the recent history and undo the edit?
It was amusing at first, but it's since passed that, and I have to wonder; why the fuck is that idiot still coming out with the same bullshit? Also, semi-protection doesn't seem to be working properly on that article...MoldyHay wrote:Does anyone other than me find it hilarious that Cow cleaner 5000 (T-C-L) and his sock army have been trying to turn Weekly Shonen Jump (T-H-L) into a terrorist organization for the last 6 months, and that there haven't been many other edits to the article?
This is the breaching experiment that Karmafist did, to which Jimbo viscerally reacted, "went meatspace" by complaining to his employers in a conscious effort to damage his career prospects.thekohser wrote:Last week, I embarked on a vandalism experiment -- using a different IP address each day, I make one edit to one Wikipedia article, inserting some bit of false, but roughly plausible information. Then I check back to see if anyone has reverted me.
So far, not a single reversion.
Fuck no. He made hundreds of subtle vandalisms using socks, and many of them were never caught or noticed. What was ALSO happening: he was posting little "Save Wikipedia!" things on the talkpages of new editors. Plus fighting with insiders. Plus threatening to write a book about Wikipedia's internal politics. Silencing KF was easy and effective, because by that time he was a highly-placed operative in the New Hampshire Democratic Party.Triptych wrote:This is the breaching experiment that Karmafist did, to which Jimbo viscerally reacted, "went meatspace" by complaining to his employers in a conscious effort to damage his career prospects.thekohser wrote:Last week, I embarked on a vandalism experiment -- using a different IP address each day, I make one edit to one Wikipedia article, inserting some bit of false, but roughly plausible information. Then I check back to see if anyone has reverted me.
So far, not a single reversion.
Karmafist went wrong I think in that he got a bit cocky in some of those edits and put in humorous or absurd information. And that got noticed.
And of course he has several pupils *cough* FT2 *cough*.EricBarbour wrote:That's the Jimbo Way. If screaming and threatening doesn't work, backstab.
My employer is probably unafraid of Jimmy Wales.Triptych wrote:This is the breaching experiment that Karmafist did, to which Jimbo viscerally reacted, "went meatspace" by complaining to his employers in a conscious effort to damage his career prospects.thekohser wrote:Last week, I embarked on a vandalism experiment -- using a different IP address each day, I make one edit to one Wikipedia article, inserting some bit of false, but roughly plausible information. Then I check back to see if anyone has reverted me.
So far, not a single reversion.
Carry on, and please publish the results. Anyone else could conduct their own experiment using socks -- the more examples that can be accumulated, the better for the primary thesis.thekohser wrote:Regardless, after 30 articles have been tainted, and another 90 days elapse, I will report on the results, and I will restore Wikipedia to its previous perfect state of knowledge management. Thus far, the pages receive anywhere from 3 to 25 page views per day. One page was (in the distant past) of some interest to Jimbo himself, so that one will be particularly interesting to watch.
What are the chances that at least one of the articles will be so altered that you can't just revert your change?thekohser wrote:I will restore Wikipedia to its previous perfect state of knowledge management.
If I understand correctly: The advantage with creating named sock accounts (as opposed to raw IP edits) is that the IP information for the named sock accounts is deleted from the WMF servers after 90 days. Whereas of course an IP edit is permanently visible. So if you do this with named sock accounts and get away with it for 90 days, you've gotten away with it forever, unless you've typed something at the userpages or talkpages to connect them.EricBarbour wrote:Carry on, and please publish the results. Anyone else could conduct their own experiment using socks -- the more examples that can be accumulated, the better for the primary thesis.
I think I need to meet your "dealer".Triptych wrote:What kind of made-up crap could one type that will go unchallenged? On the trireme article state that the original Roman engineer specification was 48 meters, but subsequent combat developments necessitated it be reduced to 40. On the photographic film article state there was an alternate early technique by Heinrich Kaufmann in which caramel liquid was used to treat paper sheets for enough transparency to project images, but this technique proved of limited durability, and celluloid then came to the fore. In the list of whales at Cetacea article, insert a fictional type of whale, say a "pygmy green whale (Feresa verdentes)."
100% chance, thus far. One article in my sample was fairly quickly edited by one of its top contributors, shortly after I edited it. He apparently didn't realize that my edit was comprised of bullcrap.Poetlister wrote:What are the chances that at least one of the articles will be so altered that you can't just revert your change?thekohser wrote:I will restore Wikipedia to its previous perfect state of knowledge management.
I'm going to guess it was Montana Secondary Highway 503 (T-H-L)?thekohser wrote:100% chance, thus far. One article in my sample was fairly quickly edited by one of its top contributors, shortly after I edited it. He apparently didn't realize that my edit was comprised of bullcrap.Poetlister wrote:What are the chances that at least one of the articles will be so altered that you can't just revert your change?thekohser wrote:I will restore Wikipedia to its previous perfect state of knowledge management.
