I had a glance at the history on [[Short story]] and couldn't spot the alleged edits. Anyone else got any ideas? A public call to vandalism deserves a reply.
- d.
Sunday Times (London) June 10, 2007
Online disinformation
WICKEDLY INACCURATE? As a member of the Society of Authors, I felt it my duty to correct Wikipedia creative-writing articles which stated "a short story can be anywhere between 5,000 and 50,000 words" or had grammatical errors, such as "Mary laid on her bed". The originator had included the following invitation: "I hope someone would (sic) feel free to add concepts and examples." I took him at his word, and edited. The next day all my edits had been reversed.
Anyone dismayed by this "dictatorship of idiots" should not waste time on futile attempts to turn Wikipedia into a reliable source. Instead, help it to self-destruct by adding misinformation. Wikipedia has no mechanism to deal with this other than the army of itchy-fingered know-it-alls who know nothing.
Margret Geraghty Chandlers Ford, Hampshire
- d.
On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, David Gerard wrote:
I had a glance at the history on [[Short story]] and couldn't spot the alleged edits. Anyone else got any ideas? A public call to vandalism deserves a reply.
- d.
A google search on the phrase ""I hope someone would feel free to add concepts and examples." finds only one page on the net - [[User:Mazeface]]. That page starts "I am a graphic designer and web designer. I am also an adjunct creative writing instructor. I enjoy writing, drawing, painting, weightlifting and running."
The history includes this series of edit summaries: # (cur) (last) 11:40, 22 January 2007 Mazeface (Talk | contribs | block) (rvv) # (cur) (last) 09:54, 22 January 2007 Side2winder (Talk | contribs | block) (I don't think she'll understand previous edit. You need to explain. Either, 'I hope someone will' or 'I hoped someone would'. Hope is about something that 'will' or 'might' happen.) # (cur) (last) 09:31, 22 January 2007 85.210.60.174 (Talk | block) (Forgive me, mazeface, but you don't understand your tenses. It makes you look foolish in the eyes of a linguist.) # (cur) (last) 12:00, 21 January 2007 Mazeface (Talk | contribs | block) (rvv) # (cur) (last) 10:40, 21 January 2007 86.137.111.167 (Talk | block) (incorrect use of 'should'.)
Which looks to be a pretty good match for what was described.
Chris
On 6/12/07, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:
Which looks to be a pretty good match for what was described.
A long time ago though.
Theresa
She made a similar comment on this March article (though the Times doesn't say when the comment was made): http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/arti... or http://tinyurl.com/3ad5px which refers to Mazeface...
--- David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I had a glance at the history on [[Short story]] and couldn't spot the alleged edits. Anyone else got any ideas? A public call to vandalism deserves a reply.
- d.
Sunday Times (London) June 10, 2007
Online disinformation
WICKEDLY INACCURATE? As a member of the Society of Authors, I felt it my duty to correct Wikipedia creative-writing articles which stated "a short story can be anywhere between 5,000 and 50,000 words" or had grammatical errors, such as "Mary laid on her bed". The originator had included the following invitation: "I hope someone would (sic) feel free to add concepts and examples." I took him at his word, and edited. The next day all my edits had been reversed.
Anyone dismayed by this "dictatorship of idiots" should not waste time on futile attempts to turn Wikipedia into a reliable source. Instead, help it to self-destruct by adding misinformation. Wikipedia has no mechanism to deal with this other than the army of itchy-fingered know-it-alls who know nothing.
Margret Geraghty Chandlers Ford, Hampshire
- d.
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
___________________________________________________________ Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html
David Gerard wrote:
I had a glance at the history on [[Short story]] and couldn't spot the alleged edits. Anyone else got any ideas? A public call to vandalism deserves a reply.
Thanks to Chris' post, I think the picture becomes a little clearer looking at the contributions of the IP 86.137.111.167 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.137.111.167
That maybe sheds a little more light. The one at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fiction_writing&diff=prev&... refers to lengths of short stories. I think there's some faulty memory at work along with some misunderstanding of Wikipedia.
The date of the meetup of UK Wikimedians in Birmingham has been provisionally set (by me, based on teh votes) to be Saturday 20th October 2007.
You have until at least Friday to register/change your opinions/availability at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Birmingham_2#Date_vote if you haven't already.
Chris
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org