Update on the farrago. Apparently they printed my letter in the 25 April edition of The Spectator.
Liddle responds:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/the-week/3573521/part_2/letters.thtm...
Spectator readers respond to recent articles
I did foul Ronaldo
Sir: Let me assure Charles Matthews (Letters, 25 April) that I most certainly vandalised Cristiano Ronaldo’s Wikipedia page — on not one but two occasions. This would suggest that the site’s ‘history’ section is every bit as inaccurate as every other part of Wikipedia. It’s fun, but most people would be advised to trust it about as far as they would a press statement from Derek Draper.
Rod Liddle Marlborough, Wiltshire
My comment (placed onsite, may not get past moderation):
Rod, you don't convince. What you wrote can be checked. Article histories log all edits: it's a database, that's what the software does, no inaccuracies. Ask someone under 30. The odd thing is that journos wishing to convince the gullible that "the Internet" has intrinsic "low standards" tend to fall into this trap of making confident, wild claims (cf. Giles Hattersley of The Sunday Times); if you don't actually understand the medium yet, try not writing about it. Adopting perceived lazy standards as your own, where convenient, used to be called "going native", in the old days.
Charles