

Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years   - abhishekdelta
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Hoax-article-on-India-Portugal-clash-fools-Wikipedia-for-5-years/articleshow/17913938.cms

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swang
A problem that prevents people from spotting things like this is that there
are tons and tons of sites that just have copies of Wikipedia articles or the
site just blindly copies things from Wikipedia.

For example... Alicia Keys birthday on Wikipedia is wrong, she was born in
1980, not 1981. If you read the Talk page about this there are several times
where discussion of this takes place. But due to a Wiki Admin sitting on the
page, he/she refuses to acknowledge this change and the articles he cites that
she was born in 1981 most likely were using the Wikipedia article as
reference. So how do you argue your position when the admin says, "Hey my
source is Magazine X, it is reputable so therefore you are wrong"

~~~
DanBC
Wikipedia is not about truth, it is about verifiability. That's fine,
everyone[1] knows this. Anything that appears in WP should be traceable to
multiple reliable printed sources.

For the article you mention there should be some way of getting multiple
reliable sources of a birthdate.

When one person sits on a page there's verious conflict resolution measure to
jump through that might help. I hate WP so I'm not going to get involved but I
guess there are some admins here who might want to help you.

What's troubling about the OP is that this WP article was a good article, and
so should have had some kind of thorough vetting. That's disconcerting.

Also, once an article reaches good or great (or whatever) status I'm not sure
if there's any way for visitors to get that exact version of the article,
rather than just what today's edit it.

~~~
greenyoda
_"Anything that appears in WP should be traceable to multiple reliable printed
sources."_

However, even "professional" journalists have become so sloppy these days that
it's likely that the printed source used Wikipedia as the basis for its
information.

~~~
bdunbar
> even "professional" journalists have become so sloppy these days

This is not a new thing - journalists have been sloppy with facts for a long
time.

It is simply more noticeable now, with multiple sources of information.

~~~
greenyoda
I think it's gotten worse with the coming of the web. When newspapers were
printed once a day, they had a few hours to check facts and edit before press
time. Now that a newspaper is expected to have a story published on the web
minutes after it happens, there's much less time to do this. The newspapers
have become much more like TV news.

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leephillips
This is a good reminder of the only safe way to use Wikipedia: as a pointer to
references, rather than as an actual source of information. And you must check
those references yourself, rather than assuming that they say what the article
authors claim they say.

~~~
netrus
Is there really something like a "save way"? Every expressed knowledge can be
wrong in the end. You can increase your level of certainty by checking the
origin of the information, reputation of source and author, or by measuring
against common sense.

What degree of certainty is needed for - looking up a subject you are
generally interested in? A undergrad paper? A local newspaper journalist? A
doctoral thesis?

90% of my Wikipedia usage falls in the category of self-education and general
interest. Wikipedia is certainly a safe source for that.

~~~
jacquesm
> Wikipedia is certainly a safe source for that.

Until you want to know about India-Portugal relations.

~~~
ChuckMcM
And this of course is the tricky bit. There is a parable about a conqueror who
captured a city by throwing a handful of diseased grain into the grainary and
telling the town this. The town surrendered to his siege rather than anyone
eat possibly tainted grain.

Of course the message is that you can sometimes destroy the value of a large
asset or strength with a small act. The trick is that if anyone ate the grain
it was unlikely they would get sick, but if someone did get the tainted grains
they would get very very sick and possibly die. Wikipedia lives and dies by
who is willing to use it as a source of information, and once that source it
tainted "enough" the bit flips and nobody uses it.

~~~
Evbn
And yet regular journalism is as bad but we don't see constant hand wringing
about how the NYT or WSJ is full of BS.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Perhaps we read different blogs :-) I see a lot of hand wringing at the lack
to journalistic ethics and poor research which results in either misleading or
worst completely inaccurate stories. Those complaints about the NY Times write
who made up sympathetic characters for his story? The Wired science writer who
repackaged stuff. Poor information integrity in general.

------
charonn0
According to Wikipedia[1] there have been several hoax articles that lasted
even longer than this one.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia)

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notatoad
>...William Beutler, president of Beutler Wiki Relations, a Wikipedia
consulting firm, told Yahoo News.

What? How is 'wikipedia consulting firm' a thing?

~~~
unreal37
I have started a Hacker News Consulting firm, and if you want to interview me
about how this is "a thing" for a major news article that gets my name in
print, I would be happy to explain that to you.

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ghshephard
One of the results of Wikipedia, is that I now take every supposedly reliable
article with a grain of salt. Any encyclopedia that doesn't provide detailed
references that I can review, I presume to be _inaccurate_ until proven
otherwise.

That, I think, is the greatest contribution that Wikipedia has made - it
requires people to cite their sources, before they get _any_ credibility; and
even then, there is always some doubt.

~~~
Evbn
I hope you apply the same standard to news and magazine articles, and realize
the sorry state that journalism is in now. Wikipedia will never e better than
the sum of its sources, many of which are awful.

~~~
rayiner
Journalism has never been in a particularly good state, the patina of history
notwithstanding. Its never been a medium that has required extensive citation
of non-trivial propositions.

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dhughes
It's not even the worst of the bunch the hoax page on Wikipedia shows many
more, or is that page a hoax too?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia)

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plaes
One should not forget:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ned_Scott/Upper_Peninsula_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ned_Scott/Upper_Peninsula_War)

~~~
Wingman4l7
Beat me to it! This particular hoax is a masterpiece, complete with maps,
portraits, and a lengthy list of references. I can't find a definitive source
on how long it sat on Wikipedia before being discovered _(the history of the
linked page is muddled as it's a copy, and surprisingly this hoax isn't listed
on the list of hoaxes --yet)_ , but IIRC it was up at least a couple of
months.

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DavidAdams
To me, the fact that these expertly-created hoaxes on Wikipedia have
eventually been discovered is a testament to the strength of the Wikipedia
model. It's certain that there are still weaknesses, as have been outlined in
other comments on this story, but if we were to be given a crystal ball to
verify all of recorded human history, we'd surely find that a staggering
amount of it is wholly false winners-write-the-history-books nonsense.

What's more interesting about this article is the staggering, agressive
ignorance displayed by the commenters on the India Times website. If you're
interested in a dose of outrage to get your blood boiling, give them a read.

~~~
nash
Maybe.

The problem is we don't know how many hoaxes are there and have _not_ been
discovered. If there are a lot, then the model is failing, if there are only a
few, then it is working.

Alas, without that data, we can't make a call on the wikipedia article either
way.

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unreal37
It should be relatively easy to create a Wikipedia page about something so
obscure that nobody is actively looking for it or an expert in it. Add to it,
it is well-written and appears to be well-referenced by made-up books.

The article talks about an admittedly little-known clash between India and
Portugal in the 1600's where there was little damage or historical consequence
after. It's like an island in the ocean of wikipedia, rather than a new island
inserted into a river that people pass by every day.

It'd be much harder to make up something about a little known clash between
Germany and Canada during World War 2 because so many experts on WW2 exist.

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InclinedPlane
The problem is that wikipedia has become too heavily relied on, and there
aren't any better alternatives yet. Wikipedia is just an encyclopedia, and in
some ways it's not actually a very good one. The standard of "proof" for a
wikipedia article is actually not a primary source, it's a secondary source.
Wikipedia is setup, in its blood, to avoid having to do original work to
verify facts, they want other trusted organizations to do the leg work.

However, increasingly people are using wikipedia as a first and only source of
data, and this includes many of those "trusted organizations", which produces
a trust loop paradox. And this is because despite all these faults wikipedia
still manages to be a solid, accurate source of information most of the time.

We're not going to escape out of this paradox until primary sources become
more available on the internet and we start getting articles written which
make use of primary sources.

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greenyoda
Those who are interested in seeing the hoax article can find a copy of it at
this mirror site:

<http://www.thefullwiki.org/Bicholim_conflict>

~~~
nash
Funnily enough, it claims to have been updated 49 seconds ago for me.

Guess they missed the whole "deleted" flag.

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brini
Could ``Bicholim Conflict'' have been a potential Mountweazel for Wikipedia:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry>

~~~
Apocryphon
I don't see why it would have been created for that purpose, there are dozens,
if not hundreds, of kudzu sites scraping Wikipedia and cloning its articles as
early as 2005:

<http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo3.htm#Bastard>

------
Intermernet
"Bicholim Conflict" -> "Him Concoct Ill Fib"

