Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote

[Category 5]

Personally, i think any journalist that uses Wikipedia as a source should automatically lose their job.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Irish-stu ... .html?.v=1

[brunota2003]

I read that. I cant believe that they would use something on there that didnt have some kind of source to back it up, or at least research the quote first!

[somethingfunny]

The scariest thing about this is that while Wikipedians removed the quote before the hoaxter tipped everyone off (because it was never sourced to anything), the hoaxster could have just as easily used the Guardian article as his source which would have cemented it as "fact" in Wikipedia, even though the Guardian just sourced it from Wikipedia! It would have been that easy to change history forever. Granted, an article about a French composer doesn't have much impact, but imagine........THE POWER.

[Squarethecircle]

Probably not forever, as some clever Wikipedian would figure out that it was a process of circular reasoning. But certainly, it would have been much, much harder to catch than this incident (and they didn't even catch this one).

[brunota2003]

Wikipedia caught this one...twice. They said it was deleted twice

[Ptarmigan]

Wikipedia is the last thing I would trust. Sometimes they do link things that are credible. I remember in class, someone plagiarized an entry Wikipedia entry and got caught. How stupid can that be.

[artist]

I don't trust wiki on but very simplistic things. Years ago when lies were being spewed about political issues, each time it was corrected within 5 minutes the facts with backup were scrubbed. I knew then - never trust wiki.

[JonathanBelles]

I use wiki severely to get better sources. Wiki is somewhat of an index to new sources. Im not surprised that the world media tripped over this one.

[OpieStorm]

[x-y-no]

Wikipedia is a tremendously useful resource. I regularly use it to get a first overview of a topic. But I wouldn't rely on it as a sole source.

The scariest thing about this is that while Wikipedians removed the quote before the hoaxter tipped everyone off (because it was never sourced to anything), the hoaxster could have just as easily used the Guardian article as his source which would have cemented it as "fact" in Wikipedia, even though the Guardian just sourced it from Wikipedia! It would have been that easy to change history forever. Granted, an article about a French composer doesn't have much impact, but imagine........THE POWER.

Sounds like an interesting follow-up to this experiment. I think it just might work.

[Cryomaniac]

Wikipedia is a tremendously useful resource. I regularly use it to get a first overview of a topic. But I wouldn't rely on it as a sole source.

Exactly.

[Ptarmigan]

Wikipedia is only good for animals, technology, and pop culture.