And like clockwork the idiots are out in full force trying to mask their stupidity on the matter. Now that is something to "lol" over. Ricter, please join me.
Palin Fans Try to Rewrite History (Or At Least Wikipedia) on Paul Revere This weekend, Tuned In Jr., who is studying Boston and the American Revolution in school, mentioned that he was getting a "locked" error message while trying to load a Wikipedia page on Paul Revere. I know! As a father and a journalist, I should know better than to let my son use Wikipedia as a primary source. Fortunately, the news cycle has intervened to give us a perfect object lesson, by providing a possible reason Revere's page may have been in limbo yesterday: over the weekend, there was a war between Wikipedia editors and supporters of Sarah Palin, who were trying to "fix" the entry to make it conform with Palin's flubbed description of Revere's ride. Palin fumbled her elementary-school history on camera while visiting the Old North Church in Boston (see video above), rendering it as a ride in which Revere "warned the British" by "ringing those bells" and "send[ing] those warning shots and bells." Palin's excruciating delivery will be familiar to anyone who was ever called on unprepared in class and gave a rambling answer, hoping against hope that if you just keep talking, somehow the right answer would materialize. Palin's own explanation of the story, to Fox News' Chris Wallace, will not surprise anyone who remembers her defending her use of the word "refudiate" as not a malapropism, but intentional wordplay after the manner of Shakespeare. "I didn't mess up," she insisted. Rather, "part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there that, hey, you're not going to succeed." She was simply candidly answering a "shout-out, gotcha-type of question." In other words, Palin was making a subtle, larger point, and if you say otherwise, you're just like the lamestream media who are out to make her look bad and in fact, are simply betraying your own ignorance. (Did you know that the colonists at the time were British subjects and considered themselves British? She tricked ya there!) So: nothing new. What was new was the response of some apparent online supporters, who, as noticed by the Little Green Footballs blog, went on Wikipedia to try to make the history of the American Revolution more Palin-compliant. Among the sources they attempted to cite in support of Palin's version of events: Palin's own answer, as quoted in newspapers. The dialogue between the volunteer revisers and Wikipedia's editors is fascinating, and a little horrifying. (Using Palin's quote to bolster Palin's quote, infinite-loop-style, is justified, someone says, because the newspaper was quoting "an influential American politician.") [This is the point at which, I assume, someone points out that President Obama or Joe Biden or some other Democrat has made gaffes and been treated more leniently by the liberal media. Argue that if you want, but as Dave Weigel at Slate points out, there is no history, so far as I'm aware, of people trying to make Wikipedia support Obama's "57 states" flub.] Palin's history lesson is a controversy different in character and content from Anthony Weiner's Twitter woes last week: no one suggests on the one hand that anyone "hacked" an interview with Sarah Palin, and on the other hand botching an American history citation is not allegedly tweeting a salacious picture in public. (Which is the worse offense, I leave to the voters.) But they are both examples of a common pattern: a politician, caught in a dustup, tries to brazen his/her way through it and ends up looking even worse. (While, maybe, rallying his/her supporters even more strongly.) But each one also involves its own kind of social-media twist, which played off the malleability of sourcing online. In the Weiner case, the congressman cited a "hack" which, absent an official investigation, hasn't been proven or disproven--there are many theories about whether the crotch shot came from Weiner or elsewhere, but no absolute proof. And in Palin's case, an attempt to throw up dust by claiming allegorical speaking in the service of a larger truth got support, or at least attempted support, from someone trying to rewrite wiki-history. What is truth, anyway? I don't know that I can answer that larger philosophical question for you here. But it may be time for the Tuned In household to invest in an encyclopedia. Read more: http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2011/...least-wikipedia-on-paul-revere/#ixzz1OWK9m6A2
It's now a vast right wing conspiracy of which no one knows the truth. Good lord, you can't make this shit up
"Fortunately, the news cycle has intervened to give us a perfect object lesson, by providing a possible reason Revere's page may have been in limbo yesterday: over the weekend, there was a war between Wikipedia editors and supporters of Sarah Palin, who were trying to "fix" the entry to make it conform with Palin's flubbed description of Revere's ride." Lol. That's the problem (and strength) of wikipedia.
But who gets to decide what gets updated and what doesn't?? Wikipedia is so big and people will believe what they read there. The few who decide what gets to stay in an article and what doesn't are the true writers of modern history. People will act on what they believe is true regardless of actual truth.
People can and do make claims within the entries that are in dispute, and there is commonly a link to any controversy. That's the way wikipedia works in general, until something like this happens. Now, only now, there's a big push on to "correct" this entry.
I guess that is pretty fair. How long do you think until someone with money fights hard enough to get an article to say what they want?
That's a depressing question, because of the truth of it. I was just reading an article this weekend about how big pharma is controlling what gets published in medical journals. Edit: though I believe wiki's existence is maintained by donation, not advertising... that might make a difference.