Comments on: Wikipedia imitates Pynchon

By: edwardlucas

edwardlucas — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 10:07:38 +0000

I am torn between respect for Wikipedia’s self-correcting properties, and irritation at the scope it offers for disinformation.

I take the point about my careless use of “veteran”.

Anyone who knows anything about the ICDISS or has ideas for more leads is welcome to email me at edwardlucas(a)economist.com

By: alex

alex — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 06:34:58 +0000

“And Uqbar wasn’t the rump ‘state’ whose role in life is to make an existing state (Moldova) fail.”

The point of Transdniestria is to make Moldova fail? Thats news to me.

Must have been really bad at it for the last 16 years.

By: bi

bi — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 03:50:18 +0000

OK, deleting articles about fictitious entities is the easy part. But what about actual entities which shady characters keep trying to inject misinformation about?

By: roger

roger — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:57:26 +0000

Maria, you’re right. There are of course disputes as to why Uqbar existed. However, Tlön, it is speculated, existed not to simply dispute the reality of Moldava, but of the entire world – introducing irreality into encyclopedias with the hope that it would infect the referents themselves.

By: dthurston

dthurston — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:51:55 +0000

ken c.: Please take appropriate action when you find such entries. In the case of the Coeys I think proposing it for deletion (which takes very little effort on your part) is appropriate.

By: Maria

Maria — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:27:46 +0000

And Uqbar wasn’t the rump ‘state’ whose role in life is to make an existing state (Moldova) fail.

And Moldova is real, too. Even to people who don’t watch Dynasty. (or was it Falcon Crest?)

By: Maria

Maria — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:21:07 +0000

Roger, I think it’s ‘Uqbar’.

By: Maria

Maria — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:19:48 +0000

The Transdiestria example is a case in point for Russia’s ‘neighbourhood policy’ being captured by its Russian mafia interests. If Russia wants to play with the big boys and girls in the Council of Europe, for example, they need to cut this out.

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:56:23 +0000

I thought you were going to mention Stephen Colbert urging people to edit elephant-related Wikipedia entries to say the number of elephants had tripled in the past six months.

By: Another Duncan

Another Duncan — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:32:23 +0000

It’s not just Russia. There is an letter doing the rounds from a “Dr. Mounir Herzallah” alleging that Hizbollah deliberately build schools and hospitals on weapons dumps, then gloat about the propaganda value when the IDF bombs them. This letter has been taken a gospel by quite a few right-wing blogs.

By: roger

roger — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:31:52 +0000

Sounds more like Borges’ Urqbar to me.

By: Tyrone Slothrop

Tyrone Slothrop — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:27:42 +0000

The Pynchonians who’ve been around on the interwebs for a year or several are a little more credible than the newly-minted vintages.

By: Ken C.

Ken C. — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 23:09:24 +0000

Poking around wikipedia, I came across the articles about Phyllis Coey and her son John Alan Coey, the “famous Christian anti-communist soldier”, linking to an article about the “pro-American patriotic organization known as the Liberty Lobby”. The article about the Liberty Lobby, however, seems to think it is something more like an anti-semitic neo-Nazi organization. I guess if only a very small group cares about a topic, their wikipedia entries on that topic can stick around awhile, whatever the entries say.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 21:06:36 +0000

A slight correction. The user in question has been active since March 2006. Even in Wikipedia, that doesn't count as being a veteran. This definitely looks like a disinformation exercise.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:59:44 +0000

This is happening more frequently I think, and, as with spam, there’s an arms race between Wikipedia and the scammers. I was recently reading an anti-environmentalist blog that pointed to Wikipidia as the source for claims about a fuel additive called Dipetane (invented in Ireland in 1985). The link turned out to be a user page, and had therefore escaped the instant deletion that a real article on this topic would have suffered.