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Spanish TV Channels Vandalize Wikipedia

Posted by kdawson on Sat Aug 18, 2007 09:47 PM
from the setting-fire-to-a-house-to-see-how-quickly-the-firemen-arrive dept.
Media Television The Internet
strider2004 writes to tell us that Barrapunto, a Spanish tech news site, has outed two TV stations in Spain, one public and the other private, for engaging in Wikipedia vandalism for the sake of a story. (The link is in Spanish; Google translation here.) The public station introduced falsehoods into the Wikipedia entry for John Lennon; the private one vandalized the Elvis Presley entry. Both stations said they were performing an "experiment" to check the reaction time of Wikipedia. Both articles were promptly corrected by other editors.
Update: 08/19 13:01 GMT by KD : Barrapunto is not affiliated with Slashdot.
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Submission: Spanish TV channels vandalize Wikipedia by strider2004 (734981)
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  • So.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grassy_knoll (412409) on Saturday August 18 2007, @10:02PM (#20282481) Homepage
    Goofballs add bogus info to Wikipedia; said bogus info is promptly corrected.

    This is news?

  • Another Brick In The Wall (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vampyre_Dark (630787) on Saturday August 18 2007, @10:20PM (#20282613)
    You open what is supposed to be all the world's knowledge combined in a site, except that the policy is to treat it like a public bathroom. That's fine, but why is it news every time someone gets caught taking a shit in it?

    It's fine to let people contribute, but most articles need to be locked down when they are completed, and then you submit stuff to be added for peer review or something. There is no reason why 8 year old Johnny needs to be editing the live version of a page on something he knows nothing about.

    Is there enough new information on Elvis arriving, that his page needs to be open to live submissions from anyone 24/7/365?

    • Is there enough new information on Elvis arriving, that his page needs to be open to live submissions from anyone 24/7/365?

      There will be as soon as I catch up to his spaceship!

      -:sigma.SB

      disclaimer: this post contains facetiousness, which is known by the state of California to cause miscarriages in lab giraffes.

    • I've seen a few of my high schools students editing Wikipedia with bogus info just for kicks.

    • Re:Another Brick In The Wall (Score:5, Insightful)

      by abhi_beckert (785219) on Saturday August 18 2007, @11:26PM (#20283025)
      The problem is if 8 year old Johnny can't edit the page, he won't bother. Anyone can fix a typo, but if it's too much work they won't do it.

      The openness is the reason wikipedia succeeded. Not because being open gives better content, but because being open gives more content, and more content makes it valuable to more people, and being valuable to more people gives them more editors, and more editors usually gives better content.

      Also, you're forgetting: any page with regular vandalism does get locked down.

    • Re:Another Brick In The Wall (Score:4, Insightful)

      by init100 (915886) on Sunday August 19 2007, @04:09AM (#20284283)

      It's fine to let people contribute, but most articles need to be locked down when they are completed

      How would you define completed? Very few articles can claim to contain every piece of knowledge about the subject. There is always room for more, so locking down anything permanently would be a horribly bad idea.

  • I'm shocked! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Manchot (847225) on Saturday August 18 2007, @10:35PM (#20282735)
    I can't believe this is true! Why did no one tell me that Slashdot has a Spanish version? Seriously, looking at it is like looking at Bizarro Slashdot.

  • The experiment was already done before (Score:4, Informative)

    by ILuvRamen (1026668) on Saturday August 18 2007, @11:10PM (#20282933)
    In case nobody remembers, Stephen Colbert's "experiment" proved the response time for fixing BS entries in wikipedia (that librarians are hiding something) in about 15 seconds. Why do they have to try the experiment otra ves? :P

  • Fair's fair (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cabalamat3 (1089523) on Saturday August 18 2007, @11:27PM (#20283043) Homepage
    I think someone should write graffiti on big letters on the walls of these TV stations... purely as an experiment, you understand, to see how long it takes to remove it.
  • "We were just testing to see how fast the emergency services would react..."

  • barrapunto - not just for nerds (Score:5, Funny)

    by boguslinks (1117203) on Sunday August 19 2007, @12:13AM (#20283275)
    Their slogan is not "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters", but "La informacion que te interesa"...

    What does that make them, the spanish Drudge Report?
    • Well, their top story is that Netbeans is switching to the GPLv2, whereas Daily Drudge's top story is that HISTORIC HELL STORM SET FOR JAMAICA.

    • Re:barrapunto - not just for nerds (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Flipao (903929) on Sunday August 19 2007, @04:02AM (#20284253)
      There's no proper translation for terms like "nerd" or "geek" in spanish, so the only slogan that'd make sense would be "News for people who're good with computers, but socially inept", which doesn't quite have the same ring to it. As a proper nerd, I of course learned english just so I could read the original version of Slashdot. :P

  • Response times depend on the article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JimboFBX (1097277) on Sunday August 19 2007, @01:04AM (#20283549)
    Other "experiments" kept from us:

    Response time for vandalizing Sonic Hedgehog [wikipedia.org] - 8 days
    Response time for vandalizing Sonic the Hedgehog [wikipedia.org] - 8 seconds
    • Not really.

      Sonic the hedgehog is an article a lot of people have enough info about to be able to pull it back into shape. On the other hand SHH isn't.

      Response time will depend on the depth of knowledge required to maintain an article, some are simple, some are still within the knowledge domain of the wider community who are interested in that field and some can only be edited by experts in their field. SHH being a good example of the latter.

      (Assuming the vandalism wasn't just sticking a very obvious bit of

  • Ah yes. (Score:4, Informative)

    by ta bu shi da yu (687699) on Sunday August 19 2007, @01:18AM (#20283599) Homepage
    Vandalism by the media. I guess another entry for this article on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

  • Spanish Ads (Score:3, Funny)

    by AngryJim (1045256) on Sunday August 19 2007, @03:22AM (#20284117)
    clicking on the Barrapunto link, I get an advertisement for something called "Dorkbot Madrid"

    I think it's the first time an advertisement has ever made me want to buy something, particularly when I have no clue what it is.

  • Why the outrage? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jparker (105202) on Sunday August 19 2007, @04:41AM (#20284429) Homepage
    Most of the comments so far seem very upset that the TV channels did this, but it really doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Wikipedia is a community, a society like any other. It has its values, with accuracy being one of the most important, and someone did a social experiment to see how well that community adhered to its principles. Sure, it required being a little bit of a bad actor, but if Slashdot reported on a new study where researchers bumped into people while carrying several packages and found that Linux users were more likely to help them pick up their dropped items, I don't think the comments would be blasting them for assault.

    This was minor public vandalism, of a kind the community sees every day, and a kind that it was built to correct. If they had launched a systematic campaign to spread disinformation throughout many articles, that would be a serious problem, but changing the date of Lennon's death to 2007 instead of 1977? If edits like that caused Wikipedia any kind of damage, it would have died years ago.

  • In the name of science (Score:4, Funny)

    by a9bejo (828492) on Sunday August 19 2007, @06:38AM (#20284835) Homepage

    "Both stations said they were performing an "experiment" to check the reaction time of Wikipedia."

    Maybe someone should perform an "experiment" to test the stability of that TV station's websites.

    • Re:Good Ol' Unreliable WikipediaBS (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2007, @09:56PM (#20282417)
      Anyone can change it without anything to back it,{{citation-needed}} generally changed by the whiny commie demoncrat terrorists to spread their communist lies.{{citation-needed}}

      • Re:Good Ol' Unreliable WikipediaBS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by InfiniteWisdom (530090) on Saturday August 18 2007, @10:52PM (#20282843) Homepage
        Just because it's a medium that allows anyone to edit stuff, it doesn't mean adding bogus information isn't vandalism. That's like spraying painting graffiti on a wall isn't vandalism because paint sticks to the wall.
        • That analogy made exactly zero sense.
          A wiki is an online medium that contains information that anyone can edit. A wall is a surface people are generally not supposed to write on regardless of the correctness of the information. I don't have any idea how spray paint got into this, spray paint is permanent, editing text is not.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by ultranova (717540)

            A wiki is an online medium that contains information that anyone can edit. A wall is a surface people are generally not supposed to write on regardless of the correctness of the information.

            Wikipedia is an online dictionary. People aren't generally supposed to edit it to contain outright lies on purpose. They can do so, but then again, they can write on walls.

            I don't have any idea how spray paint got into this, spray paint is permanent, editing text is not.

            Really ? I must look into it the next time

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by tepples (727027)

              Wikipedia is an online dictionary.
              Nit: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and Wiktionary is a dictionary. Otherwise, you make valid points.

          • Re:Good Ol' Unreliable WikipediaBS (Score:4, Insightful)

            by ta bu shi da yu (687699) on Sunday August 19 2007, @01:28AM (#20283631) Homepage
            Then perceptions != reality. It was never OK.

            • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

              by fyngyrz (762201) *

              If these stations insist that such experiments are ok, perhaps someone should suggest to them that hammering a spike through the transmission line of their tower might be just as reasonable. You know, just to check their reaction time. After all, after the fuses and output devices are replaced, it'll be as good as new, eh? :-/

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Gerzel (240421) *
            You know they actually did ban Steven Colbert for that and they tend to pre-emptily lock things that are brought up on the show for changing.

            • Re:Good Ol' Unreliable WikipediaBS (Score:4, Interesting)

              by denebian devil (944045) on Sunday August 19 2007, @10:46AM (#20286101)
              Or, you know, not:

              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stephencolb ert [wikipedia.org]

              "BEFORE YOU POST HERE: Please realize that this user was NOT blocked for vandalism, joking, or 'poking fun at Wikipedia'. This user was banned for violation of Wikipedia's Username policies which state that "Names of well-known living or recently deceased people" are inappropriate and should be indefinitely blocked until confirming evidence (in this case, from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central) shows that this is, in fact, Stephen Colbert. Although Mr. Colbert 'made the edits on national television', he was also joking and it is not at all certain if he was in fact the person who made the edits attributed to this account. Until the blocking administrator (Tawker) receives word from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central that this is Mr. Colbert, this account will remain blocked."

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Then why do they speak Mexican in Spain?

    • Re:Red neck response (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2007, @10:02PM (#20282477)
      for all the idiots: Mexico != Spain

      It is for sufficiently large values of Mexico.

    • Re:Wait ..... (Score:5, Funny)

      by BinBoy (164798) on Saturday August 18 2007, @11:04PM (#20282901) Homepage
      How on Earth can two television stations be of homosexual leanings?

      Vandalizing wikipedia is gay.

      • Vandalizing wikipedia is gay.

        Properly vandalizing wikipedia would be. But these TV stations are just wannabees!

        If you want your vandalism to stick, become smarter. Either pick lesser known subjects (John Lennon and Elvis Presley are just too high-profile: these are well-watched, and anyting funny will be corrected within minutes). Or, if you absolutely must pick well-known subjects, at leas be smarter about it:

        One way would be to make more than one change, using more than one username (I hope you made one of these? "Anonymous IP"

    • Well, from what I understand, people in Spain speak Spanish with a lithp. Hope that helps.

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