[WikiEN-l] Re: People editing their own Wikipedia articles.

[Timwi]

Tom Cadden wrote:
> But what if an article contains a widely believed 'fact' that
> actually is bullshit.
> 
> eg,
> 
> Michael was born in Toronto in 1956 and moved to Atlanta in 1961.
> 
> But Michael finds the article and knows that he was born in Ottawa
> but his family moved to Toronto some months after his birth. Plenty
> of internet sites say Toronto but he knows for a fact that it is
> wrong. Can he correct that, or does he need to produce his birth
> certificate to correct an error about himself? lol

I know this posting is a bit old, but I just wanted to say something 
here. People always act like there are only two possibilities. In this 
case, the perceived two possibilities are either the article says 
"Toronto" or the article says "Ottawa". If you think about it, though, 
you'll see that if hundreds of sources on the Internet say Toronto it 
makes perfect sense to state explicitly that those websites are wrong. 
This will show a reader that the author of the Wikipedia article -- 
whether it be that very Michael or not -- is aware of the fact that 
other sites claim "Toronto" and that the author still thinks Ottawa is 
right. That's much more convincing than just seeing it say "Ottawa" and 
all other easy-to-find sources say "Toronto", which makes it look much 
more like a simple mistake.

Timwi