Olbermann: Who's Hacking Wikipedia?

[Hissyspit]

Run time: 06:38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YvgwoS0vzg   Posted on YouTube: August 17, 2007 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: August 17, 2007 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 1998

 
August 16, 2007 - Countdown W/ Keith Olbermann.

[orleans]

1. link to article about this:

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker

[mike_c]

2. this needs to stop....

Editing Wikipedia is not "hacking" it-- it's doing precisely what Wikis are intended for. The COMMUNITY OF USERS needs to develop safeguards for tracking information reliability, but Wiki is an OPEN community-- it will begin to die, or at least become something different, if it ceases to be open.

[Mist]

3. It seems to me that the tracking discussed on Olbermann makes Wiki

MORE open, not less.

[mike_c]

4. agreed-- my remarks had to do with the broader outrage...

...I've been seeing that Diebold, the Vatican, etc would even participate in editing Wikipedia. It is clear that some parties likely have agendas antithetical to maintaining ACCURATE open information, but my point was that any community that wants to be open should have ways to access the reliability of information submitted (or manipulated, etc). Wikipedia has more to do in that respect, but so far it's trying to work out the right things to do AND maintain its open community, which I appreciate tremendously.

[Mist]

9. OK--sorry, I think I misunderstood your post! nt

[Berry Cool]

6. It is HACKING it when deliberate lies are inserted.

And deliberate lies have been inserted.

Olbermann didn't mention it, but at one time his Wiki entry claimed that he had graduated from a public high school in New Jersey, rather than the private school he graduated from in New York. Is this a slur? Not really. But is it accurate? No.

I have no doubt that the "public high school in New Jersey" change was made as an attempted slur. You know, as if to say, "He doesn't have any fancy-schmancy prep school education like he keeps saying he does. He's lying. He graduated from a public school in a state everyone makes fun of."

I consider stuff like that to be hacking. And the stuff that inserts negative opinions deliberately, like the crap about the "blogosphere" giving him grief for trying to make Peter Jennings' death "all about him." Nonsense. The blogosphere didn't give him grief. The well-known universe of Olbermann-haters on wingnut sites like OlbermannWatch and others did that. And they would have accused him of that no matter what he did or said.

[Perry Logan]

5. The Wikipedia incident stands as a metaphor for the right-wing dilemma.

Wingers constantly try to revise reality to fit their delusions. They cook the science, They cook the news. They cherrypick the intelligence. They make stuff up. But reality always reverts.

[lovuian]

7. I think the Vatican editing a Sein Finn article kinda says

this is an AGENDA
the Vatican's purpose was to give guidance to souls

not correct information in Wikipedia

and the CIA was caught too

now wonders why CIA and Vatican is linked

it shows the rewriting of history thats the agenda control information

its indeed scary stuff

[truedelphi]

8. K 7 R'ed n/t

[Perry Logan]

10. Just for laughs--has anyone seen the "Uncyclopedia"?

It's like Wikipedia...except everything on it is totally made up:
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Here, for example, is an excerpt from the entry on "kitten huffing":

"a controversial practice that has recently been growing as a popular and healthy alternative to street drugs. Despite a long history in Western culture, the practice remains largely taboo. Excessive huffing has been known to produce undesirable side effects, including addiction, damaged sinuses, corrupted brains, which may lead to someone thinking they're something they aren't, and, in some cases, death. It is a general rule of thumb that anyone who huffs more than 3 kittens a day is an addict. Veteran huffers often caution against huffing more than a couple kittens per day as overdosing can be very unpleasant and quite dangerous."

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Kitten_Huffing