Re: Sinbad Is Not Dead And Wikipedia Post Was Just A Hoax
- From: noahproblem@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 17 Mar 2007 10:04:32 -0700
On Mar 17, 11:51 am, Peck <Pecktacu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Wikipedia was again the victim of a prankster, who this time vandalized
the profile of US entertainer Sinbad. He posted a entry according to
which Sinbad had died of a heart attack on the morning of March 14.
"Somebody vandalized the page," Wikipedia spokeswoman Sandra Ordonez
said Friday, quoted by Reuters. "Whoever did this was obviously a
prankster. I don't think they did this because they thought he [was
dead]." The false entry was caught, and removed, by a volunteer
administrator about 30 minutes later, Ordonez said.
Sinbad, whose daughter called him about it, was amused and brushed it
off as a "commonplace" occurrence on the easily accessible Internet.
"Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again," the Los Angeles-
based entertainer told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
Sinbad's page on the free online research tool now carries the message:
"This page has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with
vandalism."
Wikipedia, which was launched as an English language project on January
15, 2001 as a complement to the expert-written and now defunct Nupedia,
has grown into one of the biggest virtual communities in the world, with
faithful and enthusiastic members, all driven by the noble purpose of
making information accessible freely to any one at any time.
Unfortunately, not everyone shares the same noble ideas and vandalism
started to affect posts on Wikipedia right after its online debut. Posts
that contained racist, untrue or religiously-fanatic comments began
pouring in, without a viable way from Wiki officials to strengthen
control over users' opinions or claims.
A few days ago Wikipedia was in a center of a controversy involving a
false-eminent theology professor. A 24-year old college dropout, Ryan
Jordan, deceived the trust of Wikipedia users by portraying himself as a
prominent theology professor, thus becoming one of the most respected
members of the Wiki community, with more than 20,000 pages of
information edited under the pseudo "Essjay". He described himself in an
online profile as a "tenured professor of theology" and said he taught
both undergraduate and graduate courses in the subject. He also said he
held a bachelor of arts in religious studies, a master of arts in
religion, doctorate in philosophy in theology and a doctorate in canon
law. It was later discovered that he actually used Catholicism for
Dummies to write his "influential" work.
In February this year, pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller has started a lawsuit to
identify the person who posted a defamatory paragraph about him on
Wikipedia. The lawsuit has been filed against Josef Silny & Associates,
a Miami education consulting firm, because it seems that someone used a
computer from this company to post the allegedly defamatory remarks. The
defamatory comments about Zoeller were posted for the first time in
August last year and then again in December and were removed in January
this year.
In December 2005, John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment
Center and chairman emeritus of The Tennessean, found out that his bio
was modified by Brian Chase who created an entry about him, alleging
that he was involved in assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy.
Remember, kiddies, when it comes to fake Internet deaths, you can't
spell "Sinbad" without the "S", the "I" and the "D" in "SID".....
.
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