Hi all,
I don't think this has been discussed yet. An editor from India with the handle Legolas2186 has been indef'd from the English Wikipedia due to years of fabrication of sources on articles related to Madonna, Lady Gaga and other artistes.
Here are a few relevant links:
http://www.dailydot.com/society/wikipedia-hoax-vandalism-legolas2186/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Legolas2186/Major_contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Legolas2186/Fixing_citation_problems
This highlights the vulnerability of the encyclopedia to insidious editing even when published sources were called into question. In this case, a trusted member of the volunteer community displayed a pattern of consistent misrepresentations and even fabrication of sources in some cases.
thanks,
Anirudh
It's been over a year now. He was considered highly reputed before he was questioned. Once the investigation started he disappeared from the project.
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 6:36 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I don't think this has been discussed yet. An editor from India with the handle Legolas2186 has been indef'd from the English Wikipedia due to years of fabrication of sources on articles related to Madonna, Lady Gaga and other artistes.
Here are a few relevant links:
http://www.dailydot.com/society/wikipedia-hoax-vandalism-legolas2186/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Legolas2186/Major_contributions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Legolas2186/Fixing_citation_problems
This highlights the vulnerability of the encyclopedia to insidious editing even when published sources were called into question. In this case, a trusted member of the volunteer community displayed a pattern of consistent misrepresentations and even fabrication of sources in some cases.
thanks,
Anirudh
Wikimedia-in-en mailing list Wikimedia-in-en@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-en
This has happened even with contract-linked editing of information sources, such as the old encyclopedias.
As a philosophy, managing information the wikipedia way has many things to offer, but omniscience isn't one of them. Actually, perfection can only be a goal, not a promise. The good thing (some comfort, if not a genuine solution) is that the current resource can be instantly corrected when such unhappy things come to light.
A problem will remain with the offline distributed copies that many of us think are essential to bolster information empowerment in the lesser digital world. But even that is not analogous to the sheer waste of millions of copies of paper editions, and the likelihood that many, if not most, never got corrected (appended) and still hang about spreading misinformation.
wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org