Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert has fired another shot in his mock battle against Wikipedia. Last year, Colbert coined the term “Wikiality,” a state in which reality would become whatever the majority believes it to be. Colbert’s neologism prompted fans to built Wikiality.com, a parody of Wikipedia.
At the time, Colbert challenged his viewers to edit Wikipedia to triple the number of Elephants in the world. As recently as yesterday, the Wikipedia Elephant article states:
Thanks to the works of Stephen Colbert, the elephant population has tripled in the last 10 years.
Following news reports last week that Microsoft was paying Wikipedians to alter content, Colbert challenged his viewers to change the Wikipedia “Reality” entry to state, “Reality has become a commodity.” This Wikipedia page is now protected, following edits as recently as today that replace the entire Reality article with:
Reality has become a commodity.
Needless to say, this has prompted a fair amount of discussion on Wikipedia. But for the most part, Wikipedians have taken this with good humor.
The link to the Colbert Report segment on “Wikilobbying” is here. Enjoy!
May 29, 2007 at 9:38 am |
[...] Colbert Wiki Pranks Stephen Colbert had Jimmy Wales on his show last week, and a fresh round of Wikipedia pranks has ensued. You can best view the interview [...]
October 5, 2009 at 9:28 am |
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