The Democratic Party of Virginia settled on a nominee for governor this past week, choosing state senator Creigh Deeds over two better-known rivals, including former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe. (On the Republican side, Bob McDonnell was unopposed for the nomination.) Following the race, Virginia blogger and Wikipedia contributor Waldo Jaquith posted about “Wikipedia’s role in Sen. Deeds’ nomination“, featuring quotes from a live discussion WashingtonPost.com. Wrote one voter:

I voted for Deeds. The WaPo endorsement really helped. I started doing the research this weekend and was disappointed that the WaPo did not have a quick guide the issues. I searched for a half an hour and did not find a quick rundown of the candidates and the issues.

Also, Deeds had a wikipedia page about his past stances. That really helped. The other two did not have similar pages.

Interestingly, the specific page quoted — “Political positions of Creigh Deeds” — has been merged back into the main Deeds article, but the content appears intact. Jaquith writes:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Wikipedia is going to play a large role in year’s Virginia elections. The campaigns that a) understand that, b) harness that and c) do so in a fair, unbiased way will reap the benefits. The campaigns that ignore Wikipedia or attempt to manipulate its information in a way that is anything less than fully truthful will be penalized accordingly.

In fact, that seems to have already occurred in the primary. As noted in an overexcited but basically correct diary at Daily Kos last week, ““You can’t handle the truth!” TMac’s dogs scrub Wikipedia of facts” supporters of McAuliffe did remove sourced information, none of which has not been restored as of this writing.

In the first instance, material about a land deal and disgraced Democratic fundraiser John Huang because it “lacked NPOV” (i.e. not written from a neutral point of view), and in the second about business deals involving Telergy and inPhonic “for being unsourced.” Well. Lacking a neutral tone is cause to rewrite a section, but not a reason to delete — certainly not as a first resort. Second, the inPhonic material was properly sourced, and better than deleting the Telergy section would have been to find a citation. On the other hand, this goes both ways — the material was almost certainly added to cast doubt upon McAuliffe’s fitness for office, and according to the discussion page about McAuliffe’s article, much of this criticism popped up just days before the Tuesday primary vote. And so it goes.

So now the Commonwealth turns to the general election where, if Jaquith’s prediction is correct, the articles about Deeds and McDonnell will be both important resources as well as the locus of battles to establish narratives about each candidate. Indeed, both articles are the top non-official sites listed in Google searches for each candidate’s name. (Another important article will be Virginia gubernatorial election, 2009.)

As yet, Deeds’ article is the better one, in part because of the aforementioned section outlining Deeds’ political positions. His article is also somewhat more active, probably due to the active primary, and more experienced editors working on the page. Recent contributors to Deeds’ page include Virginia resident John Broughton, who literally wrote the book on editing Wikipedia, whereas most recent work on McDonnell’s page has been done from unregistered accounts represented only by the user’s IP address. Jaquith, for his part, has recently edited both.

It’s a good bet that, after the summer, editing on both articles will ramp up as November draws closer. It will be interesting to see how they develop.

You may have heard of Earth Hour, an eco-Hallmark holiday for the Twitter age, created by the World Wildlife Fund in 2007 and promoted in the media each year since.

You are probably less likely to have heard of Human Achievement Hour, a counter-holiday launched by the Competitive Enterprise Institute this year.

I was unfamiliar until I noticed CEI’s Twitter account acting upset on Friday about the deletion of a Wikipedia article about their new tradition. I responded to @ceidotorg and said I would take a look for myself. Here are the relevant tweets, in descending choronological order:

ceidotorg: #hah Attempts to ‘delete’ Human Achievement Hour in Wikipedia http://ping.fm/4rABR #fr33 #tcot #liberty #c4 –1:38 PM by CE

ceidotorg: #hah WIkipedia deletion discussion here http://bit.ly/kZMJ No good reason given for axing entry on HAH -#liberty #tcot –3:22 PM

ceidotorg: #hah deleted by Wikipedia now banned by Youtube in 1 minute -Human Achievement strikes again http://ping.fm/5wtS4 #liberty #tcot –12:44PM

williambeutler: Sorry, @ceidotorg, your Wikipedia article was not deleted because editors didn’t like your agenda: http://twurl.nl/ersp1o –1:11 PM

williambeutler: @ceidotorg Not surprising an event that hasn’t occurred yet and is just getting notice wouldn’t make the cut. Next year may be different. –1:16 PM

ceidotorg: @williambeutler if you could provide any solid evidence that the same occurred to an entry that agreed with green agenda-I’d believe that –3:34 PM

I said I knew just the place to look, and that was WikiProject Deletion sorting/Environment/archive, which saves past discussions from Wikipedia’s Articles for Deletion process — where entries that just aren’t ready for prime time go to die.

On that page, I counted 36 deliberations over keeping vs. deleting articles on Environmental topics since the archive category was created last year. And after counting twice, I found 14 nominated articles were kept, 13 were deleted and 9 were “other” — sometimes being merged into other articles.

This demonstrates in the aggregate that just any submission of interest to Wikipedia’s many environmentalist-minded contributors won’t stick just for being “politically correct.” The results even looks outwardly fair, although Wikipedia is concerned more with process than outcome.

Meanwhile, there are specific examples of such debates from the past and present we can study:

• There is no longer an article about an outfit named Carbon Purging, which seems to be one of these “green” companies whose business model depends on an Al Gore-style guilt-trip.
• Climate conflict, a little-used term apparently referring to some kind of feared global warming-sparked regional confrontation, got the boot.
• More recently, the neologism Hot Stain (not what it sounds like, whatever you think that may be) is currently the subject of a sustained, as it were, debate on both sides (based on what I’ve seen, I lean “delete”).
• And a biographical entry about an “eco-feminist” named Leslie Davies is currently headed down to defeat.

The important thing is that all of these decisions — and all of those that resulted in a “keep” — were made by community consensus based on the content guidelines with which anyone can familiarize themselves.

Since I started writing this post, I’ve been following the actions of an editor using the handle Thehondaboy, who had been pressing the CEI case on the “AfD” debate over Human Achievement Hour (aka #hah, if you didn’t catch that) in recent days, has been trying to dramatically expand the “Criticism” section on the Earth Hour page to include substantial details about the campaign, including just about every single mention in the media — over and over again, after being reverted — as if the previously-given explanations (about why they didn’t satisfy the guidelines) never took place.

And it’s not an insignificant point that Human Achievement Hour had in fact already been prominently mentioned on the Earth Hour article. Yet Thehondaboy was apparently not satisfied with that.

I’m a little surprised this account hasn’t been temporarily blocked from editing, although it does look like it’s headed in that direction. I have no idea who Thehondaboy is, though I do certainly hope it is not someone from CEI edit warring on this point. From this editor they’d be wise to keep their distance.

Wikipedia needs conservatives and right-leaners to contribute, especially at the margins where many topics would be lopsided in favor of the left-progressive perspectives of editors from WikiProject Environment. As an economic libertarian myself, it’s especially frustrating to see CEI’s cause reduced to a futile struggle against a set of rules (and a community) that its chief advocate hasn’t taken the time to understand.

I have written elsewhere that many conservatives’ complaints about Wikipedia are misplaced (see here and here, for example) and this seems to be another such case.

Conservatives are not unique in having a weak grasp of how Wikipedia functions, nor are they even alone among political activists. The website is undoubtedly complicated, but it’s hardly incomprehensible. If you learn to edit according to rules, you can figure out which battles are winnable — ahem, which content disputes are likely to be resolved in your favor — and save yourself a real headache.

If you’re like me, you’re a member of Barack Obama’s social network my.barackobama.com mostly for informational purposes. That is, to see what they’re saying. Today on a semi-public (anyone is free to join) listserv associated with a group called “Obama Rapid Response”, I found this curious suggestion from one member:

As frequent readers know, I take vandalism of Wikipedia seriously, especially when it’s political in nature. So who would recommend such a thing? I Googled his name, and this was the first result:

Which leads to this:

And then to this:

Ewen’s identity appears to be no real secret (nor is his e-mail address, for that matter), but what he doesn’t volunteer is that he is also an editor and advocate of the Citizendium, a would-be rival to Wikipedia founded by the co-founder of Wikipedia who isn’t Jimmy Wales (it’s Larry Sanger). And he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. In fact, it appears Ewen’s account exists only to defend Citizendium’s honor on Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons, maintaining a template to note articles there that are based on Citizendium articles, among other activities. I could only find one, and the article is, perhaps appropriately, Vinegar.

But Ewen appears to be not so much a loyal Citizendium user as a loyal Wikipedia critic, because it seems he also took a considerable amount of time last month to write a page for Google’s recently launched semi-competitor, Knol, about Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church. The article is very long and appears to be quite informative, except for its one-sided account of the Jeremiah Wright controversy:

News and political commentary outlets repeatedly broadcast brief excerpts from several sermons by Trinity’s thirty-six-year former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, which especially conservative political commentators interpreted as anti-American and supportive of several conspiracy theories. The repeated airings brought the Obama campaign into crisis until, days later, Obama responded by delivering a speech, A More Perfect Union, that was widely lauded across the political spectrum. Obama later completely severed his ties with Wright and Trinity, although some of his political opponents have continued to try to use the matter as a political wedge.

For what it’s worth, the same incident on Wikipedia is described in neutral language and appears one paragraph earlier.

And what of his suggestion that Obama supporters “tussle” (as Jennifer Lopez memorably did with (or rather to) Isaiah Washington in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight) on the Political positions of Sarah Palin article? Well, the article in question has been edited nearly 100 times today, and not clearly by any new Palin antagonists. The only reversions this afternoon are to the edits of one user, Booksnmore4you, active just since late August. This account appears primarily concerned with adding tendentious arguments against the Republican vice presidential nominee to this article and the main Sarah Palin entry. There is only one exception to this pattern: Booksnmore4you’s Wikipedia career began by editing three random articles before editing Trinity United Church three times, in one case to include text similar to that found on Stephen Ewen’s Knol page.

So there you have it: Stephen Ewen is a sometime critic of both Wikipedia and Sarah Palin, as of recently an active opponent of the governor on Wikipedia and, as of today at least, an activist using tools provided by the Obama campaign to suggest that fellow supporters make life difficult for the dozens of editors doing real work to improve the article. One can’t hold the Obama campaign responsible for Mr. Ewen’s actions, but one hopes they agree that his advice should not be followed.

Update: And because I take Wikipedia seriously, I’ve added a note about this on the Talk page associated with Political positions of Sarah Palin.

Update, Tuesday: Stephen Ewen responds in the comments:

The above is outrageous and slanderous. Since the overwhelming preponderance of authors at the article appeared to be Palin supporters, I sent out a few email requests for people to go and collaborate at the article, if they were so inclined to deal with the back and forth debate at Wikipedia, so as to hopefully produce a more neutral outcome. This is routinely done at Wikipedia, and in fact, there would be few quality science articles there without users doing such. Wikipedia’s fundamental philosophy is that balancing viewpoints produce better and more neutral articles. That’s the point. I am requesting you kindly take down this blog post in this light.

Naturally, I won’t be removing the post. Without getting into the details of his edits, all it takes is a glance at Ewen’s recent contributions to determine that his edit summaries are highly uncivil, which is always a red flag. He is right insofar that balancing viewpoints are supposed to produce a better Wikipedia. But if he really believes that inviting partisans unfamiliar with the customs, to say nothing of guidelines, at Wikipedia is the way to accomplish this, then he really is better off focusing his attentions elsewhere.

Considering that my last two posts were more or less about non-coverage of the John Edwards kerfuffle and highly active Wikipedia articles, I can’t believe I’ve so far missed out on the controversy over what to do with said scandal on said politician’s entry on said reference website.

More than 26,000 words (!)* have been expended on the discussion page associated with the John Edwards encyclopedia entry since the National Enquirer posted a story claiming he was seen leaving a hotel room rented for Rielle Hunter (last week), the woman with whom they have alleged he fathered a child out of wedlock (last year). So far, there is no mention of this story in the article — let alone the existence of Ms. Hunter — and because it has been temporarily locked (see above), it doesn’t appear that anyone will. Not just yet, anyway.

I’ve now read about half the debate, which is the whole extent of it before new people start showing up and re-arguing old points. Based on my own knowledge of how Wikipedia works and what I’ve seen in the press, I’ve come to the conclusion that, even though it sure looks like Edwards’ goose is cooked, Wikipedia’s editors are currently doing the responsible thing by keeping it out of the article.

This post is longer than most, so I am tucking the length of it below the fold. If this subject interests you, follow me.

*When I started writing this post yesterday, it was 15,000. Another 11,000 words (!) went up overnight.

Update: This post was featured in a story by Sarah Stirland at Wired.com today, and points out, there are now a couple sentences about the controversy in the article. I left this comment on the story:

When the page came unlocked, it seems that Wikipedia editors previously uninvolved in the debate came onto the talk page, held a formal vote, and now it’s just a few sentences in the 2008 Presidential campaign section. Or it was until I changed it to “2008 presidential campaign” — a Manual of Style thing.

I’ve seen it argued several times that many people will be coming to the article on Edwards for information about the situation — after all, it’s his second Google search result — but, and you’ll have to trust me for a moment, that is not in fact reason enough to include it. Wikipedia rules supersede any supposed “right” to read about it on Wikipedia.

So why not add it?

Though I certainly agree that it looks like the stories about Edwards going back several months now have some real merit and something certainly happened at the Beverly Hilton two Mondays back, the key allegations of infidelity and illegitimate paternity have yet to be reported by a reliable source, generally meaning any publication with a record of accuracy and fact-checking. The Enquirer, which has indeed accurately reported scandals involving politicians but is also known for paying sources, falls short of this standard. And Fox News, which does count as a reliable source, has only corroborated circumstantial details of the story.

This standard is not being selectively applied. When Tim Russert’s Wikipedia article was edited to reflect his passing before there was confirmation, I commended the editor who changed it back:

I’d also like to salute the anonymous first-time editor at 66.187.200.74 in New York City for rolling the page back until the rumors could be verified. … [T]he Verifiability requirement for new information is one of the central tenets of Wikipedia. It’s what keeps the sometimes unreliable website anywhere in the neighborhood of reliable.

As one of the article’s chief defenders pointed out,

Fox confirmed that Edwards was at the hotel. Should we add in a section that says, “Edwards found at hotel avoiding tabloid reporters”? That is all that has been corroborated.

That’s what Alex Pareene suggested at Gawker yesterday, not at all unreasonably:

Wikipedia’s power-mad power-users are immediately deleting any and all mention of the John Edwards lovechild scandal the second any other user adds it. You could go over there and add “In July of 2008, Edwards was confronted at a Beverly Hills hotel by National Enquirer reporters searching for evidence of his participation in an extra-martial affair”—all true and verified by more “reliable” sources!—and it wouldn’t last two minutes.

So the better question is: Regardless of the merit of the central charge, doesn’t the fact of the controversy warrant mentioning? The short answer is: Not yet.

To be sure, many have pointed out that the Enquirer story has been discussed in mainstream newspapers, and the Edwards talk page is in fact hosting two separate lists of traditional media articles covering the dispute.

There are two reasons to proceed with caution, in addition to the truth remaining at large. One is Wikipedia’s strict guidelines for biographies of living persons and the other is that Wikipedia is a reference site, not a news site.

To take the last point first, the simple fact of Wikipedia’s not being a news source means that being up-to-date is just one value in competition with others. One seemingly strong argument for adding the controversy to the article is that it is a major event in Edwards’ career. That will probably be true, but we still do not know how it will play out. As the Wikipedians like to say, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball.

To the first point, this caution goes double for articles about living people. These articles are scrutinized more than most, because Wikipedia knows that its articles can meaningfully impact the lives of its subjects. Even though Wikipedia does not consider Wikipedia itself to be a reliable source, people will still believe what they read there. And can you blame Wikipedia for not wanting to be sued? Just because Edwards isn’t suing the Enquirer doesn’t mean Wikipedia should run with it. Not to mention, Wikipedia doesn’t “run” stories.

Here’s an example I think Edwards’ critics will respect: Last year, the Enquirer reported claims that George W. Bush had resumed drinking. This story was never corroborated, and unlike this current Edwards situation, that story passed quickly into obscurity. Consequently, you will not find this mentioned on the main article about Bush. Nor should it be. Until the situation is revolved, the two Enquirer stories are more alike than not. But if the media controversy does have a notable or reportable impact on Ewards’ future career, it will be duly noted.

Perhaps it will even warrant its own encyclopedia entry.

Ultimately, the lack of corroboration and uncertain notability of the situation is is all that’s keeping it from inclusion on the Edwards article. Patience. And remember that Wikipedia is best understood as a starting point for research, not as a final arbiter of truth.

1. Article: Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack
   Why: The blockbuster video game commonly known as “GTA IV” will be released Tuesday, but there are reports it has leaked online, and the list of songs and artists has to date not been fully listed.
   Detail: A conscientious editor has tried to call the mob to reason: “This page has zero sources. I understand the game comes out on Tuesday, and there are leaked copies that people have (pirated and otherwise), but unless a credible source lists the soundtrack for the game it has no business being on wikipedia. This entire page is original research or speculation. This page needs to be re-done, or mostly deleted until we can verify the soundtrack from a reliable source.” He tried creating a version based entirely on previously published facts, but his version has not prevailed. But as he acknowledges, if the information is accurate, the page will be verifiable on short order. A losing battle.
2. Article: Thierry Henry
   Why: French soccer player, the Featured Article (FA) on the Wikipedia Main Page on April 23.
   Detail:
   82.69.66.147 of London and 82.20.251.226 of Portsmouth, England really have it in for the guy.
3. Article: Danica Patrick
   Why: The comely young IndyCar driver/GoDaddy spokesbabe won her first IndyCar race — and became the first woman ever to do so.
   Detail: In contrast to Henry, Patrick has enthusiastic supporters in Ciley Myrus (”YOU GO GIRL!”) and Happy Halter-topped Hippie Chick (”WE LOVE YOU, DANICA!”) but they aren’t helping, either.
4. Article: Ocean sunfish
   Why: FA on April 23.
   Detail: Sometimes I wonder why people bother promoting their articles for the recognition, considering the high level of tedious vandalism that frequently occurs, as it did in this case. On the other hand, if I was really into the Ocean sunfish, I would probably take pride in defending its honor.
5. Article: Deaths in 2008
   Why: Week in, week out, people keep shuffling off this mortal coil.
   Detail: For two weeks in a row, nobody of any significant fame (at least in North America) passed away. Judging by the history page, the most intense interest surrounded the shooting death of a New Orleans rapper named VL Mike.
6. Article: Super Fun Time
   Why: The mid-season finale of “South Park.”
   Detail: As he has in previous weeks, Professor Chaos — deployer of more userboxes than any other editor I’ve seen — has valiantly defended the page from the inclusion of a Trivia section. Some of his fellow editors are very much annoyed by his insistence that material from the section be moved into the main article, but he is correct that Trivia sections are frowned upon, and there is none in the article now.
7. Article: Vasa (ship)
   Why: As you may have figured out by now, if the subject has been obsolete for 30 years or more, it must be a FA, as this was on April 24.
   Detail: Seriously, who vandalizes an article about a shipwrecked 17th century Swedish warship? Is it the Swedish part?
8. Article: American Idol
   Why: It’s still going on, right?
   Detail: It’s come to the point in the season where even I, an ardent non-watcher, know the name of at least one person on the show. But the fact that related articles haven’t appeared on the WikiRage top 10 most-edited much over the past few weeks has to count against its continued relevance.
9. Article: Pearl Jam
   Why: FA on April 22.
   Detail: Although considered good enough to be featured on the front page, the article also continued to include fanboy POV like “Pearl Jam continues to generate hit albums, tour successfully, and garner critical acclaim into the 21st century.” in the first section, and still includes a quote asserting they were “the most popular American rock & roll band of the ’90s” just because some guy at All Music Guide said so. Nirvana fans strenuously object.
10. Article: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)
    Why: As the title of the article indicates, Mariah Carey’s latest album goes highbrow. Okay, not really.
    Detail: In late March, an editor pointed out on the Talk page, “It should be mentioned in the intro that its a play on the famous formula by einstein.” Why he or she did not simply add it then I don’t know, but it’s better than (but not nearly as fun as) this comment from the Talk page a month before: “whats with that title written on the page???……..is that the new title??…….has it been confirmed??……isnt ‘that Chick’ the official title?? and if it is the official title,whats does the ‘E’ stand for…..d” In any case, today the article helpfully notes the reference, and explains: “The album name means ‘(E) Emancipation (=) equals (MC) Mariah Carey (²) to the second power’.” And I am not sure I am glad we have that cleared up.

Holdovers this week: Nothing from last week returns.

Falling off the list: Everything from last week.

Recurring themes: The latest episode of South Park, and Deaths in 2008 makes a comeback.

Honorable mention: David Archuleta, whose name I alluded to at least recognizing, was in fact #13 for the week.

Images courtesy Coneee, mattindy77 and _Jer_ on Flickr.

I didn’t agree with Gilliard much, and I don’t know Texas Nate at all, but I agree this development is worrisome. As I pointed out last week, it’s not the first time entries for bloggers have been so nominated — and as that effort was beaten back then, so should it be now.

As a Wikipedian in good standing, I added my two cents, reproduced below:

The article certainly needs work — indeed, it was only begun upon the announcement of his passing on Sunday — but more to accord with Wikipedia style polices rather than meet NPOV guidelines.

When the big book on the liberal netroots is written, Gilliard will be more than a footnote. Wikipedia has the ability to record that now, and I believe it should.

Update: Good news — after a string of “keeps,” the silliness is over:

Easy call here. The only arguments for deletion are thinly veiled personal attacks. The New York Times only does obits if you are notable. Also, the claim that one must be notable enough to be in a paper encyclopedia is patently absurd. Agreed, notability should be considered, but in Mr. Gilliard’s case there is absolutely no question about that.

Wales was a good sport about the high-profile headaches Colbert has caused, specifically for the Wikipedians maintaining the Elephant and Reality entries (both of which are still semi-protected). He was so even as Colbert not-so-subtly encouraged readers to vandalize several new pages (Oxygen, Einstein; both protected) and the entire Spanish-language edition (you could say they’ve been put on notice).

Simultaneously overtly and covertly (the show is genius à la South Park) Colbert encouraged his Nation to visit the appropriate Wikipedia pages and assert that “Librarians are hiding something.” Of course, tonight of all nights, site administrators would be watching:

Mere seconds, of course. But this time, instead of just blanking and bolting, they’ve stuck around to argue in the Talk pages, (thanks to Not Paul Begala for pointing this out):

Wow: Going into a Wikipedia discussion page and chiding a Wikipedia editor for taking the site policies seriously is like, well, kind of like if Wales had started telling Colbert how to do his job.

Helgers7, a legitimate Wikipedian, is clearly right (as is Colbert) that one should be skeptical about the contents of any random Wikipedia entry. And yet amusing as the whole Colbert game may be, vandalizing the site doesn’t get that point across constructively — editing with integrity does. Helgen7 gets this; Sonic Hog (whom we’ll meet in a moment) is wasting his time.

Dedicated Wikipedia trolls are not that uncommon and, for good reason, Wikipedians try not to talk about them. In late 2006 administrators fought back an attempt to delete all entries related to blogs, LAist’s Tony Pierce in particular. But those vandals tend to be unregistered or IP abusers (i.e. sock puppets), whereas the aforementioned apprehended vandal/Sega aficionado Sonic Hog has actually been on the site since December 2005. Perhaps contsituting a new classification of Internet troll, Sonic Hog appears to be a resident troll of Wikipedia.

This readiness to engage in manipulative behavior online also reminds me more than a little of the Ron Paul Machine, that several thousand-strong cohort of libertarians, paleos, lefty trolls and Internet pranksters.

Surely Colbert still has the better-organized online army, and while he uses his basic cable pulpit knowingly, the Ronbots aren’t getting such explicit directions from the Paul campaign. They know to do what Colbert has to ask his fans to do: freep polls.

And what about the Wikipedia entry for Ron Paul? Since May 16, the discussion page runs to more than 24,000 words. I have to cut this off somewhere, and 24,000 is reason enough.

In conclusion, never underestimate the power of a small group of Internet users to change the results of any online power struggle. I think this was best summarized by one Digg user who has become something of a dedicated defender/reverse troll, frequently digging anti-Paul stories (including one Blog P.I. post). 1337 FTFA:

There’s something to be said about those groups who can keep a good humor about themselves while also understanding where to draw the line. In that spirit, let’s return to the Wikipedia discussion pages, where Blog P.I.’s favorite Colbertian gets pwned:

In sum, it’s worth reminding oneself what and what not to take seriously. That goes double for fans of Stephen Colbert and Ron Paul.

The first was last August, when the faux winger unleashed upon Wikipedia his so-called Colbert Nation — an unknown percentage of his audience willing to carry out simple online tasks (e.g voting in online polls) at Colbert’s request — to make two specific Wikipedia edits: that Colbert’s opinion of Oregon is that it is “Idaho’s Portugal” rather than “California’s Canada” or “Washington’s Mexico,” and that the number of African elephants in the wild had tripled over the last six months (you’d have to see it, but alas, as I advised against, it has been removed from YouTube). The Nation responded, causing headaches for Wikipedia editors and administrators that persist to this day.

On Monday Colbert struck again. While the segment isn’t on YouTube, it is available through Comedy Central, thereby meeting a minimum standard of web literacy but (surprisingly for this show) failing to understand why increased fan control over the content is a good idea. There is an embedding capability to let fans put the videos on their own sites, but the back end is terrible. Just click on the image below — or better yet, open it in another tab:

The subject this time was the recent controversy about Microsoft paying an independent contractor to correct perceived errors on Wikipedia. It’s a new issue and a complicated one, but for now suffice to say that my take is closer to the TWiTters‘ than Michael Arrington’s.

“The Colbert Report,” being the late-night comedy it is, went with the same angle as last time, per the show’s website (image has been altered to remove other segment panels):

I digress.

In the August and latest segments’ opening moments, Colbert announced the night’s Word. Last time it was “Wikiality,” this time it was “Wikilobbying” — and instantly, throughout the Eastern time zone, fingertips fell upon keyboards: was there an entry for Wikilobbying yet?

At that point, no. In those first five seconds (or so) I was one of several hundred, possibly even a couple thousand, Internet users requesting that file. And of that crowd, the quickest-fingertipped member of the Colbert Nation exhibited the same wit that brought us “Frist!” and Fitz!”:

I hit refresh. Moments later, another loyal vandal referenced the recurring migraine mentioned above:

Among those thousand or few who turned up inside of the segment, a handful were actual Wikipedians who had obviously expected this:

Remember, maybe a minute has passed, and Colbert hadn’t specifically asked anyone to do anything. But then he did. According to Colbert, Microsoft’s actions tampered with the very concept of reality itself, and so this time he issued a specific directive:

Actually, this vandal was either a moron or a poor typist, because what Colbert actually asked for was:

Reality has become a commodity

Multiple Wikipedia administrators went into action, cleaning up the mess…

…and even correcting their own mistakes:

One of the great things about Colbert’s show is the audience participation enabled by the Internet. Colbert’s “feud” with Oregon’s own The Decemberists grew out of similarly-themed user-generated video contests. I enjoyed the “green screen challenges” — those were creative. The Wikipedia onslaught may be harmless insofar as pages are immediately fixable and reliably fixed, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t destructive. Not to mention, Colbert’s pranks reinforce overwrought fears about the website’s supposed vulnerability.

But think of Wikipedia like the Internet itself. The structure of the network and the community of editors is redundant by its nature. If one thing goes wrong and even if many things go wrong, the corrections are usually prompt. Yes, they’re less reliable along outlying nodes and even some overtrafficked ones. Neither claimed to be without flaws, yet both will withstand virtually any attack (save electromagnetic pulse).

You have to be a loser with no life — or a late-night comedian and his his unblinking minions — to think vandalizing Wikipedia is a good idea. And it provides further evidence for all the comparisons to “The O’Reilly Factor,” Colbert’s program is not just a parody of O’Reilly’s fanbase, it is the mob they presume to be parodying.