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...
Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
21–30 of 42 posts
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#22One should not forget: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ned_Scott/Upper_Peninsula_...
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.
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#23>...William Beutler, president of Beutler Wiki Relations, a Wikipedia consulting firm, told Yahoo News. What? How is 'wikipedia consulting firm' a thing?
I'm assuming that it's basically the real-life-meets-wikipedia equivalent of an SEO firm.
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#24Those who are interested in seeing the hoax article can find a copy of it at this mirror site:
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#25"Bicholim Conflict" -> "Him Concoct Ill Fib"
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Yes I believe I suggested adding in both years as a compromise unfortunately the admin would not budge. Going through various commitee groups on Wikpedia to get this compromise did not seem like a good use of my time
Perhaps it would be a good idea for disputes to be recorded with the wikipedia article i.e. in your case their would be a dispute registered in the foot notes over the birth date of Alicia Keys(with a link to the alternative put forward). This would allow others to investigate further if need be, adding any new information to the dispute as and when found.
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#27A 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 sitt…
There was recently a similar issue with the article for the singer Paloma Faith. To cut a long story short, Ms Faith claimed to have been born in 1985, and given that she claimed this fairly consistently, it was reported as fact in a range of publications.
Every official record, however, has her date of birth in 1981. On the talk page for the article, people were producing her record on the births index, on company incorporation documents, there was even someone who went to school with Ms Faith confirming she was born in 1981.
In the last couple of weeks the case went to dispute resolution and the issue has finally been resolved (i.e. her date of birth has been changed to 1981), but I was shocked by how pedantic certain users were being, refusing to correct the issue for technical reasons (the official documents are not accessible free-of-charge so could not be used as references, etc.)
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#28To 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.
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#29What if most of the historical records are work of fiction. ;)
Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
#30To 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-his…
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.