No 106: WIKIPEDIA
Yes, hello. Is that Wikipedia? I’d like to place an entry.
Go ahead! This is the people’s online encyclopedia. We depend on collaboration from all over the world. Since we were founded in 2001 we have grown to 1.8 million articles in 200 languages and . . .
Yeah, yeah, well, this one’s about me. I’d like it to go on record that my vital statistics are 38, 24, 30, I’m blonde, have an IQ of 187, an OBE, I like puppies and I do a lot of work for charity, although I don’t really talk about it. Oh, and I use only recycled toilet paper.
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Riiiiiight. Erm, you do know that other people can add to or amend this entry if they wish?
What? Oh. Well, if anyone tries to bring up that business with the shoplifting in 1988 then I’ll sue. It’s lies, all lies. I fully intended to pay for that frozen chicken.
Look, I should warn you that it would be most unwise to paint an unduly flattering portrait of yourself on Wikipedia right now. Some senior politicians’ staff have been caught, shall we say, airbrushing their CVs.
Oh, lighten up. We all do that. I’ve said for years that I have a degree in physics from Cambridge when really I did textiles at Sunderland Poly.
Well, we happen to think that it’s no laughing matter, for instance, that Senator Tom Harkin’s staff removed a reference from his biography to the fact that he once falsely claimed that he had flown combat missions over North Vietnam, and his subsequent recantation.
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Come on! It’s merely being selective with the facts.
But without accuracy we are nothing. How do you think John Siegenthaler, a former USA Today editor and aide to Robert Kennedy, felt when, for a joke, a delivery worker in Tennessee tampered with his entry and wrongly implicated him in the Kennedy assassination? He also falsely stated he had lived in Russia for 13 years.
Lived in Russia? How dare he? I’d sue his ass! Why would you do that unless you were a filthy spy?
Do say: Tests showed that, normally, Wikipedia is as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Don’t say: I’m just off to clean up Mark Oaten’s entry.