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Classic Wikipedia Hoaxes Range From Funny to Nasty

by Terrence O'Brien on September 26, 2008 at 12:18 PM

Classic Wikipedia Hoaxes

Wikis (and Wikipedia in particular) are wonderful tools that show the potential of Web 2.0. Because wikis are editable by anyone, they are particularly vulnerable to attacks and "digital graffiti."

The most recent attack is captured in this screenshot on COED Magazine's Web site, in which fans of the University of Florida football team went to town on the Wikipedia entry for their rivals, the University of Tennessee. In a classy move, the Florida fans nicknamed the Volunteers "The Vaginas."

The cyber-vandalism was brought to our attention by Asylum, which also reminded us of some other classic attacks on community-editable Web sites, including the post-mortem defacing of the entry for Jerry Falwell and the founder of Wikipedia dumping his girlfriend via his own Wikipedia entry. But Asylum missed one of our favorites, the series of Wikipedia hoaxes perpetuated about the British village of Denshaw. Of course, we can't leave out the antics of Steven Colbert that led to mass editing of pages related to elephants, which resulted in the comedian being banned from the site.

Frighteningly enough, despite all these attacks and Wikipedia's vulnerability to Web vandals, studies show that it is just as accurate as established print tomes like Britannica. [From: Asylum]

Tags: digital graffiti, DigitalGraffiti, hoax, humor, prank, vandalism, web, wiki, wikipedia, wikis

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