The first one received more than 47,000 views on YouTube alone. This may not sound like a lot compared to “viral” videos with more than 1 million views, but it does appear to be the most popular video the White House has posted to its YouTube channel in several months. These days, most top out around 1,000 views, and even Obama’s own speeches are hovering around 20,000. Considering that views of 200,000+ was typical for many videos on Obama’s YouTube channel a year ago, here is an example of how President Obama’s online popularity has diminished. Meanwhile, it might well be fair to say that Goolsbee is the White House’s hottest star.

In addition to the 47,000-times seen video, Goolsbee took the same chart to the Colbert Report, where he squared off with Stephen Colbert and repeated his explanation of the president’s preferred tax bill.

The latest video was released just this morning, and it’s much like the last: Goolsbee stands in front of a pre-drawn chart on a white board and explains what it means. Maybe it’s not quite a true “whiteboard” video like American Public Media’s Marketplace Whiteboard or even those famous UPS ads. It only has a few hundred views as yet, but I’ll bet that’s about to change:

What really sells these, of course, is Goolsbee. He’s got great timing and just the right cadence for a video that’s meant to be both primarily informative and at least somewhat entertaining. One of Goolsbee’s quirkier resume items is having belonged to an improv comedy troupe at Yale, and perhaps it’s no surprise that he tried his hand at stand-up comedy earlier this year:

As this comedy blog observes, he doesn’t exactly knock ‘em dead, but he does have the confidence to deliver a much better performance, given stronger material.

In fact, that’s probably the biggest risk for Goolsbee and the White House — whether their material good enough for prime time. With the midterms in just a few weeks, the 2012 campaign will get under way soon. Is that enough time to work out the economy in small clubs web videos?

A little over a week ago, on May 14, 2008 we exclusively broke the news that Jason Reitman, the director of Juno was adapting the book UP IN THE AIR which you can read HERE. Later on that afternoon, Jason Reitman’s publicist Bebe Lerner of ID PR called me personally and asked me to update our story. Our scoop forced her to go into spin mode. Bebe wanted us to say that Reitman’s directing deal for UP IN THE AIR was not yet in place. We kindly obliged. In return, the only thing we asked Ms. Lerner to do was to tell the Hollywood trades to either mention or credit us with breaking the story. She agreed. As a precaution, when we broke the story we even emailed Borys Kit over at The Hollywood Reporter and a reporter at Variety. …

Later that night at Midnight (EDT), Variety posted the story on their site which you can read here. Guess what? We weren’t mentioned. We emailed Tatiana Siegel and Michael Fleming (Variety) and kindly requested that their story recognize our contribution and properly credit us. We were ignored.

An hour later at 1A.M., The Hollywood Reporter ran their story without crediting us over here. We were heartbroken.

Later that morning on May 15, 2008, we again emailed Ms. Siegel and Mr. Fleming at Variety and once again we we’re ignored. At least Borys Kit from The Hollywood Reporter was kind enough to email us back, apologize, and explain the situation.

That apology is bittersweet though because Borys Kit and Variety did it to us again today with the news of Jake Gyllenhaal being cast as the lead in Prince of Perisa which we first broke HERE ABOUT A MONTH AND HALF AGO ON APRIL 8TH. This not only happens to us but to all movie websites and bloggers that break exclusive news.

I’d never heard of the site before and unless you’re a serious upcoming movie junkie (once upon a time when I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly, I was) you may not have, either. But here’s one I bet you have: Ain’t It Cool News. According to Latino Review, AICN has been mentioned by Variety and THR “a grand total of 7 times.” That sounds awfully low, but it also doesn’t sound impossible.

Indeed, this not only happens to movie bloggers but all bloggers that break exclusive news or develop new stories. Blog P.I. has noted this phenomenon more than once:

• Radar is a serial offender, failing to credit numerous blogs (including this one) for reporting on the “fake” blog that exposed the Mark Foley scandal, while claiming an “exclusive.”
• More recently, Radar claimed exclusivity for an erroneous report that James Carville would take an active role in Hillary Clinton’s campaign; perhaps they should have given a hat tip to Big Head DC, which was erroneous first.
• Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, beloved by the Internet generation, have jacked numerous ideas from the Internet without acknowledging that their brilliance is made possible in part with the help of amateurs.

Mickey Kaus, who left the MSM of his own volition for the relative freedom (”no money, no editors”) of the blogosphere, complained about this earlier in the week:

There’s an implicit model underneath [Newsweek's Jonathan] Alter’s comments–blogs as the minor leagues, Off Off-Broadway, trying out storylines and scoops that may or may not make it to the Big Show. I have to admit I’ve embraced this model myself, as “Model Two.” I think blogs are (for the moment***) particularly suited to functioning as a sort of intermediate tryout area for burgeoning scandals (”undernews”). …

Alter makes big bucks because he’s called on to write about the story of the day at the precise moment it breaks out into the mainstream–and not a moment too soor! If the US bombs a Syrian nuclear reactor, the public wants to know about it right then–and Alter more or less has write about it or have a pretty damn good excuse why not. Newsweek’s editors, in effect, can make Alter jump. He’s very good at it. I’m not.

The problem with the “minor league” model of the blogosphere, is that it’s simply an extension of this “just in time” model of journalism–blogs are a conveyor belt, if you will, delivering news. ideas and angles to the MSM on a precise production schedule.

Of course, we also know that some of the brightest lights in the mainstream media both fear and loathe the blogosphere, simultaneously viewing them as competitors and parasites. To their mind, both are reasons to deny bloggers credit for the work they contribute in this asymmetrical media landscape.

The best defense they can offer, which Latino Review addresses in its rant, is the claim that blogger scoops are unverified gossip, while their reports are confirmed and fact-checked. They can say this without being effectively challenged because a) many bloggers, Kaus notoriously so, will write about unconfirmed stories that rise only to the level of gossip, and b) newspapers and magazines have multiple-source standards and established procedures for confirming their reporters’ work.

But it’s also true that sometimes blogs break legitimate news the MSM initially won’t touch or simply miss, and that sometimes the established news-gathering and -publishing processes break down. But never mind that — mainstream outlets hog the credit and spread the blame.

A blogger’s best hope is to be called up to the big leagues like Justin Rood, who went from TPMmuckraker to ABC News, or Brian Stelter, who went from TV Newser to the New York Times.

But we’re starting to get off track here, so let’s return to Latino Review’s narrow point: what to do when mainstream news organizations won’t acknolwedge true reports that originate in the blogosphere? In the short term, all anyone can do is raise the issue when it happens. Plagiarism is a serious issue in journalism, and eventually, some newspaper will be embarrassed enough that a visionary editor will require its reporters to acknowledge when a story they’re covering started online. Not only will this give credit where it’s due, but it will help news consumers look into the matter for themselves.

And when will this actually happen? My guess is about the same time the Pulitzer committee starts handing out awards for online journalism. In other words, I hope you’re very, very patient.

Which is a good jumping off point for the second installment of our look at the top-edited articles on Wikipedia.

1. Article: Major Boobage
   Why: It’s third episode of South Park’s twelfth season.
   Detail: Last week, the entry for the previous episode was number four on this list. Because a new article will be created for each new episode over the next few weeks, expect weird titles like the above to wind up somewhere on this list each week. And how many edits, total? 433 by noon Sunday EDT.
2. Article: Fitna (film)
   Why: A 15-minute documentary film criticizing Islam and the Koran, written, directed and produced by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, released on the Internet this week.
   Detail: The movie credits actually lists the official website as being at wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitna on both the Dutch (.nl) and English (.en) editions. Problem is, in each case this is a disambiguation page, because it’s an Arabic word with a few related entries already. Was this a simple mistake, or an attempt to supersede the other Wikipedia articles? Either way, whether to move the article for the movie into the space occupied by the disambiguation page has been the most controversial issue surrounding this article, and remains unresolved.
3. Article: Deaths in 2008
   Why: Passing on this week: actor Richard Widmark, Beatles music executive Neil Aspinall, pioneering radio talker Wally Phillips, NFL draft prospect Heath Benedict, Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran and my favorite: Herb Peterson, inventor of the Egg McMuffin.
   Detail: This was number three last week as well, although last week’s deaths were more publicized. Also resolved since last week: Abigail Taylor, the Minnesota girl who died following injuries sustained from a public swimming pool, passed muster for notability and has an article again.
4. Article: 2008 Tibetan unrest
   Why: Violence has subsided but not ended entirely, and governments around the world are weighing whether to boycott the Olympic Games.
   Detail: Last week, this article was on the list as 2008 unrest in Tibet (see below). The article was suggested to be renamed when it became apparent the protests were no longer confined to Tibet. However, the move didn’t actually occur until more than a week later.
5. Article: American Idol (season 7)
   Why: It’s the current season, and contestants are being eliminated every week.
   Detail: A high number of edits from IP addresses suggest that people unlikely to edit Wikipedia articles otherwise are contributing heavily to this one. My favorite edit summary: “Chikezie’s name has been revealed and known throughout the season, you incompetent twatwaffle. He goes solely by his first name on the show.”
6. Article: Sea otter
   Why: It was on the Wikipedia Main Page as a Featured Article on Monday, bringing renewed attention to this otherwise uncontroversial subject.
   Detail: Well, not entirely uncontroversial. It was also the target of vandalism in November 6 because of… South Park. Comedy Central is so far out ahead of Wikipedia it’s not even worth keeping count.
7. Article: ICarly
   Why: The Nickelodeon show just finished its first season, is being released on the Internet and seems to be getting plenty of coverage lately. Aside from that, I’m stumped.
   Detail: That’s really iCarly, but for some reason, the software powering Wikipedia changes lowercase first letters to uppercase. See also: IPod and IPhone.
8. Article: 2008 unrest in Tibet
   Why: See number four.
   Detail: Had the name not changed mid-week, it would have been the top-edited article of the week.
9. Article: Stephen Curry (basketball)
   Why: The son of former Charlotte Hornets star player and current Charlotte Bobcats assistant Del Curry, the younger Curry leads this year’s NCAA playoffs Cinderella team, the Charlotte-area Davidson Wildcats. Later today he’ll lead the Wildcats against Kansas as both vie to crack the Final Four.
   Detail: Curry’s rivals must be turning out, because a high percentage of these edits are vandalism and then the reversion of said vandalism. And I’ll admit, some of it is funny.
10. Article: American Idol
    Why: See number five.
    Detail: I’m really not the best person to be writing this. After all, I get most of my American Idol news from Tony Kornheiser.

Holdovers this week: 2008 unrest in Tibet, Deaths in 2008.

Falling off the list: Arthur C. Clarke, Britney’s New Look, Bear Sterns, David Paterson, 2008 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament, Horton Hears a Who! (film), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Brian Posehn

Images courtesy iiraa, Taekwonweirdo and Sail Whitestone.

“Blogs are attracted to shiny objects, and Colbert is nothing if not a shiny object,” Beutler said. “Even serious-minded bloggers can’t resist.”

I wish I had said “bloggers are attracted,” considering that blogs themselves are inanimate objects (heck, they’re not even objects) and incapable of being attracted to things without the help of a blogger… but I think the point gets across. Meantime, kudos to Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin for running my specific numbers:

[A]fter Colbert announced Oct. 16, he was mentioned on 0.09 percent of all blog posts (not just political blogs). Hillary Clinton had the same level of mentions during the same period, and Rudy Giuliani was mentioned on 0.08 percent of blogs.

In terms of raw numbers, Beutler said, “In the three-day period surrounding his announcement (day of, morning after, and one more day) 748 different blog posts mentioned the phrases ‘Stephen Colbert’ and ‘president.’ If you run the same search for ‘Hillary Clinton’ without ‘president’ — since we assume any post about her is also about her candidacy — we get 727 posts. [So] even though our search string for Hillary was less stringent he actually scored more mentions than she did.”

The figures above are probably more in-depth than the average reader of gossip columns can handle, but then again this is Washington, where even the gossip is a bit wonkish (Drew Carey visits Reason Magazine!).

But for the purposes of Blog P.I., it’s not quite enough. The numbers above actually come from two different sources — the percentages come from the Icerocket Trend Tool and the raw numbers from Google Blogsearch — so no mathematical formula should feature both numbers. Keeping in mind that all of these tools are flawed, it’s my belief that when they show the same pattern, you’re onto something. And this is it:

Here are the Google figures for Colbert, Hillary and Rudy. And the figures for comparing Colbert’s announcement to the (more) legitimate candidates come from this February post.

I think that takes care of everything. What does this say about Colbert? Certainly, he is as relevant — and his satire as cutting — as when his late-night show spun off from Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” nearly two years ago. That’s pretty impressive, considering the essential gimmickiness of the program.

But will he remain as relevant past 2008, with President Bush out of office? That is, of course, assuming he doesn’t follow President Bush into office.

P.S. Not just the Facebook group that’s more popular than the Obama one that inspired it, but Stephen Colbert has more support (at least according to Rasmussen’s robots) than Ron Paul? Is Colbert Nation really fiercer than the “Google Ron Paul” set? I have my doubts, but the poll is amusing.

(FWIW: I’m with Fred.)

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.

Considering that there is a lag before Google’s index will be updated, it’s likely prudent to start the 2008 Presidential Gooblebomb once the Republican nominee is known.

I wonder if an early round targeted at all the candidates (except maybe Ron Paul should link to sites what emphasize his opposition to the war) wouldn’t be of value. The only downside to starting early is that it gives the other side more time to respond.

An advantage of an early start is that Google may be getting tired of having their algorithm gamed and reduce the influence of a sudden spike of links. In this case, starting early would be an advantage.

As a defensive measure, we should reverse good Googlebomb the Democratic nominee with links to official and favorable websites once the Democratic nominee is known.

These are questions the underdog online Republican activists should be asking themselves as well. The Google wars rage on, and as every strategist knows, fighting the last campaign is rarely enough.

The Chief is correct about Google’s displeasure with overt efforts to “optimize” its search engine: Google bombs for “miserable failure” (George W. Bush), “waffles” (John Kerry) and “greatest living American” (Stephen Colbert) have all been defused, though news coverage of each remains.

So a gradual effort would make sense. But which sites do you choose? Will the strategic decisions of mid-2007 hold up in late 2008? Might Google step in and make an editorial judgment again anyway?

That’s why I’m intrigued by the reverse-Google bomb; not only is a preventive strategy wise, I presume the Oracle of Mountain View is unlikely to step in and demote a positive website — so the chances of the effort being wasted are much lower. Even if one goes the negative route, it still makes sense to match search terms with a website that actually contains those terms. The aforementioned trio of Google bombs were easy to identify because they were so obviously contrived. That said, an ongoing effort to associate John McCain’s name with negative coverage appears to be failing, at least so far.

Websites to avoid include the candidate’s Wikipedia entry and official site, which are already likely to be near the top. News stories are also risky, as a news organization could move the location of a particular story at any time, for any reason, without warning.

So what kind of site should the positive-bombers select? Here’s an idea: The participants should set up a brand new advocacy blog for that candidate, to which they can link the candidate’s name when blogging at their own sites. Not only will the new entry rise to the top, but if the blog is well-maintained, it will generate multiple entries that will rise to the top of the results as well.

Most SEO guides advise that the best recipe for success is to create content that people want to click on, link to and read. That should apply here, too. Don’t muck up the results — create the results you want people to find.

The Google wars probably will never end. But this is one way to neutralize the damage.

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.

This past weekend, I was invited by the online magazine Brainwash to expand on this very theme for their latest edition:

You’re with me, blogger
by William Beutler | Oct 8, 2006

On Sept. 28, Comedy Central’s long-running program “The Daily Show” ran a segment with correspondent Jason Jones lampooning the “trench coat, stick-mic journalism” of one Carl Monday, an on-air reporter for WKYC-TV in Cleveland. If you are familiar with the segment, chances are good you had first heard of Monday from the Gawker Media-owned sports blog, Deadspin. In May, Deadspin’s Will Leitch turned Monday’s relentless reports about a college student caught (on tape) masturbating at a public library into an Internet phenomenon.

On Oct. 5, on-again, off-again journalistic enterprise Radar Online posted an “Exclusive” story pointing out that a weblog hawking stories of former Rep. Mark Foley’s advances toward House pages — including the ambiguous e-mails now causing Denny Hastert so much trouble — was not a real blog at all. The weeks-old site was, they wrote, “filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last week.” But this story was hardly exclusive to Radar — political bloggers at Just One Minute, Daily Kos and elsewhere had uncovered all these details the weekend prior.

Of course, so had Blog P.I., but I’m not about to cite myself as an authority… at least not yet. To read the column in full, just click here.

“The Hill”! Here’s the shill: It’s a six-part documentary series that starts airing on Sundance at 9 p.m. EDT August 23rd. So if you don’t have digital cable, you can probably skip this post. But I’ve seen the first three half-hour episodes, and it’s pretty good — consider it the rumored “Real World: DC” season MTV that never seems to happen. Especially during the later years where they had to get jobs to keep them from getting drunk and fighting (not that it worked). It follows actual Hill staffers doing actual Hill staffer duties on the actual Hill, and opens against the 2004 presidential election.

There’s less drinking and fighting in “The Hill,” but it does have the next best thing: Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla). If the name rings a bell, and the congresscritter pictured above somehow puts you in the mind of “cocaine” and “prostitutes,” well, there’s a very good reason: He made some news recently for discussing those subjects (jestingly) with Stephen Colbert. Prior to this summer, he was perhaps best known in the District for being the only Democrat to offer a compromise Social Security overhaul, which is depicted in the show. He also supported the invasion of Iraq, so if you’d like to see an actual Dem official scratch his head (perhaps not literally) about what to say now, then this is for you. I’d watch it myself — if I had digital cable.

I have also been asked to relate the fact that tomorrow night at Timberlake’s (1726 Conn. Ave NW) DC Drinking Liberally (local chapter of nationwide lefty blogger drinking club) is hosting a screening. Also present will be the show’s featured characters: Eric Johnson, Lale Mamaux, Halie Soifer and Jonathan Katz, playing themselves as chief of staff, communications director, foreign policy adviser and unspecified strategist guy. Most importantly, appetizers are free and drinks are a dollar off.

This was an unpaid advertisement.

Last night he took another whack at the Beaver State in the context of lampooning Wikipedia’s open-editing policy and bias toward triviality — “Any website that has a longer entry on ‘truthiness’ than on Lutherans has its priorities straight.” — and purported to change the entry related to his Oregon fixation, live on the air: “Now, Oregon is Idaho’s Portugal is the opinion I’ve always held. You can look it up.”

But did he really change it? That’s what the Wikipedians have been talking about since 11:41 p.m. EDT last night.

In fact, somebody with the username Stephencolbert did in fact make that very edit (as well as another one mentioned in the segment) about four hours before it aired on the East coast. Of course, the allegedly careless Wikipedia administrators are taking no chances; if you click over to “Stephencolbert”’s User Talk page, you’ll see this:

At Wikipedia, we appreciate your interest in the project, but your username matches a well known public personality and has been blocked. To protect against impersonation, please provide confirmation of your identity to regain access to this account. User:Tawker has sent an emailed request and left a voicemail with the Colbert staff requesting confirmation, let him know and this account can be re-opened.

For what it’s worth, I’m a fan of Wikipedia, and the complaints Colbert jestingly cites are fairly well-addressed in the current issue of The New Yorker. Though the site is imperfect, it’s highly perfectible. And Britannica will never collect its own List of neologisms on The Simpsons, which I require.

P.S. For more high quality Wikipedia humor, don’t miss last week’s edition of The Onion.