> You can probably test this yourself by going to a popular Wikipedia
> article such as George W. Bush and posting some factual error.
> Whether it stayed or not would depend on how outlandish and subtle it
> is.
NYT on the 10th of Nov. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0914FC3A580C738DDDA80994DC404482&incamp=archive:search http://ldale.sewanee.edu/CprS/105/read/nyt/10wiki.html November 10, 2004 CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History By SARAH BOXER
t's a rocky road from news to history. If you don't think so, just take a look at the entry for George W. Bush on Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia founded in 2001 by Larry Sanger, a philosophy lecturer at Ohio State University, and Jimmy Wales, an Internet entrepreneur.
Wikipedia, maintained by users all over the world who write and edit the entries pretty much as they wish, is visited by hundreds of thousands of people daily and has an estimated 400,000 entries on everything from manga (Japanese comics) to strathspeys (Scottish dance tunes). There are no user fees and no advertising: the site is supported by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, based in Florida, which maintains and develops free resources, including a dictionary and a collection of quotations.
To keep it all under control, contributors to the Wikipedia (Wiki is the software that allows for collaborative writing) are instructed to adopt a neutral point of view. Not everyone obeys, though. So certain trusted, regular contributors and editors become administrators who oversee what is going on. But each one has a different view of that job. And that is where the fun begins.
Collaborative history is a wild ride, as the recent presidential election demonstrated. In October readers were editing and re-editing the entries for President Bush and Senator John Kerry at breakneck speed. And some of it wasn't exactly editing. If you clicked on a picture of Bush in his National Guard uniform to get an enlarged version, you would see a picture of Hitler.
By the end of October, a Wikipedia administrator from New Orleans decided to put both candidates' entries under protection until after the election: no one could edit a page on either candidate without the changes' being vetted on a discussion page. Thus Senator Kerry and President Bush took their places next to the other untouchables in the Wikipedia: Ariel Sharon, Osama bin Laden, Rush Limbaugh and Salvador Allende.
It was some lockdown. On Election Day, a "Kerry for President" banner appeared over one of the photographs of President Bush. And when that was removed, a picture of Hitler appeared where the President's picture had been. And where there was supposed to be a note on the page saying that the page was protected, instead there was a note saying, "This page has been protected by a Republican." Readers were advised that if they wanted to protect their freedom of speech they should vote for Senator Kerry.
All this stimulated a flurry of soul searching, metacriticism and self-analysis on the discussion pages reserved for the candidates. Some Wikipedia administrators promised that the pages would settle down after the election. One administrator, a German computer programmer, wrote, "Hopefully once the elections are over this article won't be the prime vandalism target anymore."
Ha! Or as they say online, lol (laugh out loud).
The day after the election, a picture showing President Bush and his daughters flashed the sign "Kerry for President." One of Wikipedia's administrators, a man from Washington State, closed the entry again, with an explanation: "Given the recent spate of vandalism, and the number of extremely angry/frustrated people in the U.S. (and abroad) today, I'm locking this down against vandals right now."
Soon, though, another administrator, known as Frazzydee, stepped in and unlocked the Bush entry, promising, "I'll guard this page like a hawk."
The hawk, however, was not careful enough. "I don't know about the rest of you," a third administrator said, but having this page vandalised every minute (literally) is getting very wearing."
One user didn't seem to mind: "Shows what people think of Bush." That comment was quickly shouted down: "No, it's juvenile idiocity - what's the point of taking your frustration out on Wikipedia?" And the vandalism continued. Late in the day an innocent question came in: "Could someone get rid of the middle-finger screen cap that's replaced the image above 'The Bush family watches tee-ball on the White House lawn'?"
Finally, long after Senator Kerry had conceded the election, one Wikipedia administrator humbly proposed an addition to the Bush page: "We should probably go ahead and add something about him winning the election, with or without mentioning the help of Diebold Electronics and ESS," he said, referring to Diebold Election Systems and Election Systems and Software, manufacturers of electronic voting systems.
Two days after the election Wikipedia's users began to punctuate Bush's new term. "Is it really correct to put '2001-2009' for Bush's term of office?" one reader wrote. "He could be assassinated, impeached, could resign, die in office ... . Unless someone has a crystal ball, this ought to be changed to '2001-present' or '2001-2009 (expected)' or something like that."
"Yes," another reader responded, "or he might suddenly disappear from Earth in the 'twinkling of an eye.' " That quote included a link to a site about Christian rapture.
Another reader proposed a longer dash after the 2001, because "while it is likely that he'll finish his term, there are no guarantees." Then, the reader said, "We'll just agree that one of us will put 2009 in when he leaves office."
But would Mr. Bush's term really end that soon? One editor wrote: "I envisage no obstacle to a constitutional amendment removing presidential term limits and President George W. Bush being re-elected again. And again and again. Then another amendment allowing foreigners to take the top job. And we'll be ready for Arnie." He linked his comment to an entry on Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger, the governor of California.
And on it went.
Surfacing from the editorial whirlpool, I wondered what had happened to Senator Kerry's entry in the Wikipedia. Two days after the election his entire entry had been replaced with a single line: "John Kerry is a girl." It has since been fixed.
-- Michael Pugliese