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Red Hot Thumbtack In The Eye

Wikipedia is garbage

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LeNoire is best known to modern audiences for her work in television. She had regular roles on the series Gimme a Break! and Amen, and is best known for her role as the GILFalicious Mother Estelle Winslow on Family Matters.

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It begins...

 

MIAMI -- Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing to track down the author who posted what he considers a defamatory paragraph about him on the Internet reference site Wikipedia.

 

Zoeller's attorney, Scott D. Sheftall, said he filed the lawsuit against a Miami firm last week because the law won't allow him to sue St. Petersburg-based Wikipedia. The suit alleges someone used a computer at Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami education consulting firm, to add the information to Zoeller's Wikipedia profile.

 

"Courts have clearly said you have to go after the source of the information," Sheftall said. "The Zoeller family wants to take a stand to put a stop to this. Otherwise, we're all just victims of the Internet vandals out there. They ought not to be able to act with impunity."

 

Wikipedia, which describes itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," leaves it to a vast user community to catch factual errors and other problems.

 

The paragraph in question has been removed, but the information has been picked up by other Web sites. The lawsuit said it alleged Zoeller abused drugs, alcohol and his family with no evidence to back up the statements. The derogatory information was first added in August 2006.

 

According to the lawsuit, the profile was last "vandalized" on Dec. 20 from a computer with an Internet address assigned to Josef Silny & Associates.

 

Josef Silny was shocked to learn his company was targeted in the lawsuit.

 

"I can't imagine anybody doing that," Silny said. "This is completely out of left field."

 

He has asked his computer consultant to investigate the complaint.

 

Zoeller sued under the alias "John Doe" to protect his privacy. But Sheftall confirmed the golf champion was the plaintiff in a phone interview Thursday with The Associated Press. The lawsuit was first reported by The Miami Herald.

 

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said no one has contacted the site about the lawsuit. He said volunteer editors are aggressive about cleaning up inaccuracies reported to the site.

 

"We try to police it pretty closely, but people do misbehave on the Internet," Wales said.

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=2775390

 

This should bring every other celebrity not happy with people editing their Wiki entries out of the woodwork. Yay.

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http://www.newschannel5.com/content/news/16030.asp

 

 

 

On-Line Encyclopedia Publishes Bogus Biography

 

He's a prominent defender of the right to free speech. But recently John Seigenthaler, a journalist who runs the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt, found himself a victim of it.

 

 

The website is Wikipedia. It's an encyclopedia where anyone can contribute, and a place where anyone can just click an article and put in their own two cents worth. Wikipedia allows anyone to edit an article without having to provide credentials, prove expertise, or even reveal your name. It’s the second most visited reference site on the internet.

 

Seigenthaler recently discovered a profile of himself on the internet he calls a "false, malicious" story.

 

Turns out someone took Seigenthaler's entry and wrote that he was once suspected of assassinating John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.

 

“I was hit by somebody hiding in that darkness, and hit hard,” said Seigenthaler.

 

“It's beyond me to imagine that anyone would write that I was suspected of assassinating the president and the attorney general of the United States,” he continued.

 

The biography is the reason Seigenthaler wrote an editorial in USA Today and appeared on CNN Monday with the website's founder, Jimmy Wales.

 

“Most people only want to help us build this free, charitable, nonprofit resource,” said the founder Jimmy Wales on the CNN show.

 

During Seigenthaler's appearance, the program's host mentioned she too had found inaccurate information on Wikipedia about herself.

 

It has raised the question about whether websites like this open the door for anyone to simply log on and re-write history.

 

“I was a victim of outrageous speech and the First Amendment Center says the first amendment protects outrageous speech, but I'm also an advocate of accountability,” said Seigenthaler.

 

As a defender of free speech, Seigenthaler says he does not plan to sue the author, but as an investigative reporter, he has resolved to uncover who it is.

 

As a result of all this, Wikipedia no longer allows unregistered users to create new pages, but they can still edit old pages.

 

Seigenthaler's bio is locked so no one can change it. Seigenthaler says there are still several minor errors.

 

 

wow, how's that news?

 

i've found myself thinking this constantly

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I think pretty much everyone knows to take anything on Wikipedia with a huge grain of salt, so I don't see what the big deal is. Yeah, someone wrote something blatantly false about someone...it's not that hard to change it.

 

I don't think you can write a research paper at most colleges and site Wikipedia as a source, can you?

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Don't cite it is the key, I've turned in an all-wikipedia 26-page college history paper and got 79% for it. Just put a bunch of bullshit sources at the end and you're good.

 

... I go to a real shitty college

 

A Canadian college I hope

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I don't know if I ever did it in college, but I know in high school I'd sometimes make up one or two extra sources to pad things out if I had only found one or two good ones to use for a research paper.

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Hey, this thread used to be great. Thumbtack's contempt for the common man always ignites comedic sparks.

 

Elitopedia

The Underman-Free Encyclopedia

 

Coming soon from 'Tack and Anus.com! Must submit proof of purchase of at least four Burzum albums to edit.

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I once wrote a 10 page paper based almost entirely off of Wikipedia. My sources cited were just books that the author of my textbook had cited. When the term ended the Professor didn't post any grades and sent out a class e-mail stating that grading would be delayed a week because he found multiple people plagiarising. At first I though "well shit, here comes an F" but when I went to his office to pick up my essay I was shocked to have gotten 100% and an A- in the class. Thanks Wikipedia!

 

Edit: I added myself to my Universities list of notable alumni. I wonder how long it will take for my name to be removed.

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In response to widespread criticism due to entertainer Rich Little's poor performance at the 2007 dinner, WHCA president-elect Ann Compton has said that while "there is no entertainment that is perfect," choices of future entertainers will not be made "to please a presidential staff, [or] to be politically correct. But what most were complaining about was the large dildo protruding from the anus of rich little."[20]

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From wikihow.com on how to get rid of fruit flys.

 

Make an oven trap:

 

* Remove all available food from kitchen. Clean the dishes, place open items in ziplock bags or the fridge.

* Open the door of your oven and place a piece of fruit (banana or kiwi peels) in there overnight.

* Wake up early the next morning and quietly close the oven door. Make sure that your children are not inside.

* Turn on the oven to 400ºF/200ºC for about 10-15 minutes and majority of your fruit flies will be gone.

* Clean the oven thoroughly.

 

 

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Fruit-Flies

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