Rawkstar.net

Posted by Bob on 18th January 2006 in Rant

I was listening to Radio 1 today (Scott Mills show) while driving home from work, they started talking about Wikipedia and how they thought it was amusing to edit other Radio 1 presenters profiles (e.g. saying they're romantically linked to random people). Now, anyone that knows about Wikipedia, understands that it's a resource for information, not a page to have a little fun making things up about random people and events and the users and administrators would get slightly pissed... some of it was amusing, I have to admit, but all it did was cause their profiles to be locked and probably their user accounts removed/banned (and probably the entire BBC's IP address range blocked!).

Most people who keep up with the news will have heard about people adding fake data to journalist John Seigenthaler's biography and other such incidents and know how big an effect it had on the site and peoples views on it.

Another thing that annoys me about the Scott Mills show is the people that request songs which have been played about 20 times already that day i.e. Sugababes, Ugly. It's just pointless. I guess it's limited to their playlists though... Good thing is, Starsailor are having a lot of airtime lately! (They're on as I write this) with their new single 'This Time'.

Rall says:-

1) It's spelt 'Sugababes'
2) User accounts on Wikipedia? I don't understand. I edited a persons thingmy on Wikipedia. And all of it was true things I added. It just so happens that it was someone else with the same name. But I didn't see it telling me I couldn't get confused.

19th January 2006 @ 04:16:20 GMT

Bob says:-

I always knew there was something wrong with the way i spelt sugababes, but couldn't quite put my finger on it... :D

Wikipedia changed the rules so you now need to sign up for an account to edit pages.

19th January 2006 @ 04:30:59 GMT

Simon says:-

That's a shame - if you have to sign up then people will be less likely to add the odd line or fact to an entry on the spur of the moment. Darn.

Simon

20th January 2006 @ 02:57:34 GMT

Bob says:-

Ok, I lied, i just had a look and it's no longer requiring users to register to edit... I'm sure they set it to that, maybe they changed back *shrugs*.

Ok, i had a further look about, they stopped unregistered users from creating pages, but you can still edit them (unless they've been locked).

20th January 2006 @ 05:58:50 GMT

Helen says:-

Wikipedia is a brilliant thing, but it can go horribly wrong - due to the very nature of humanity. Someone edited my uncle's page to say he had a great-nephew called Everett Alex Heiney. Hell knows where they got that. And they put the gory details of my cousin's death on there too. I could understand people getting ragged off with it.

19th October 2006 @ 17:02:16 GMT