http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/how-the-professor-who-fooled-wikipedia-got-caught-by-reddit/257134/ Print: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2012/05/how-the-professor-who-fooled-wikipedia-got-caught-by-reddit/257134/
> A woman opens an old steamer trunk and discovers tantalizing clues that a > long-dead relative may actually have been a serial killer, stalking the > streets of New York in the closing years of the nineteenth century. A beer > enthusiast is presented by his neighbor with the original recipe for Brown's > Ale, salvaged decades before from the wreckage of the old brewery--the very > building where the Star-Spangled Banner was sewn in 1813. A student buys a > sandwich called the Last American Pirate and unearths the long-forgotten tale > of Edward Owens, who terrorized the Chesapeake Bay in the 1870s. > > These stories have two things in common. They are all tailor-made for viral > success on the internet. And they are all lies. > > Each tale was carefully fabricated by undergraduates at George Mason > University who were enrolled in T. Mills Kelly's course, Lying About the > Past. Their escapades not only went unpunished, they were actually encouraged > by their professor. Four years ago, students created a Wikipedia page > detailing the exploits of Edward Owens, successfully fooling Wikipedia's > community of editors. This year, though, one group of students made the > mistake of launching their hoax on Reddit. What they learned in the process > provides a valuable lesson for anyone who turns to the Internet for > information. > > The first time Kelly taught the course, in 2008, his students confected the > life of Edward Owens, mixing together actual lives and events with brazen > fabrications. They created YouTube videos, interviewed experts, scanned and > transcribed primary documents, and built a Wikipedia page to honor Owens' > memory. The romantic tale of a pirate plying his trade in the Chesapeake > struck a chord, and quickly landed on USA Today's pop culture blog. When > Kelly announced the hoax at the end of the semester, some were amused, > applauding his pedagogical innovations. Many others were livid. > > Critics decried the creation of a fake Wikipedia page as digital vandalism. > "Things like that really, really, really annoy me," fumed founder Jimmy > Wales, comparing it to dumping trash in the streets to test the willingness > of a community to keep it clean. But the indignation may, in part, have been > compounded by the weaknesses the project exposed. Wikipedia operates on a > presumption of good will. Determined contributors, from public relations > firms to activists to pranksters, often exploit that, inserting information > they would like displayed. The sprawling scale of Wikipedia, with nearly four > million English-language entries, ensures that even if overall quality > remains high, many such efforts will prove successful. > One group took its inspiration from the fact that the original Star-Spangled > Banner had been sewn on the floor of Brown's Brewery in Baltimore. The group > decided that a story that good deserved a beer of its own. They crafted a > tale of discovering the old recipe used by Brown's to make its brews, > registered BeerOf1812.com, built a Wikipedia page for the brewery, and > tweeted out the tale on their Twitter feed. No one suspected a thing. In > fact, hardly anyone even noticed. They did manage to fool one well-meaning DJ > in Washington, DC, but the hoax was otherwise a dud. The second group > settled on the story of serial killer Joe Scafe. Using newspaper databases, > they identified four actual women murdered in New York City from 1895 to > 1897, victims of broadly similar crimes. They created Wikipedia articles for > the victims, carefully following the rules of the site. They concocted an > elaborate story of discovery, and fabricated images of the trunk's contents. > > ...it took just twenty-six minutes for a redditor to call foul, noting the > Wikipedia entries' recent vintage. Others were quick to pile on, > deconstructing the entire tale. The faded newspaper pages looked artificially > aged. The Wikipedia articles had been posted and edited by a small group of > new users. Finding documents in an old steamer trunk sounded too convenient. > And why had Lisa been savvy enough to ask Reddit, but not enough to Google > the names and find the Wikipedia entries on her own? The hoax took months to > plan but just minutes to fail. > > Why...One answer lies in the structure of the Internet's various communities. > Wikipedia has a weak community, but centralizes the exchange of information. > It has a small number of extremely active editors, but participation is > declining, and most users feel little ownership of the content. And although > everyone views the same information, edits take place on a separate page, and > discussions of reliability on another, insulating ordinary users from any > doubts that might be expressed. Facebook, where the Lincoln hoax took flight, > has strong communities but decentralizes the exchange of information. Friends > are quite likely to share content and to correct mistakes, but those > corrections won't reach other users sharing or viewing the same content. > Reddit, by contrast, builds its strong community around the centralized > exchange of information. Discussion isn't a separate activity but the sine > qua non of the site. When one user voiced doubts, others saw the comment and > quickly piled on. Indeed. Why *are* the skeptical geeks now on Reddit and not Wikipedia? -- gwern http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
