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Posts Tagged “Wikipedia”

Why You Shouldn't Believe Everything (Or Really Anything) You Read On Wikipedia, Part LXI Ben Sisario, who wrote a 33 1/3 book on Doolittle, wants someone to correct the user-sourced encyclopedia's entry on the Pixies, because he has evidence that the site has the year of the band's formation wrong—and, thanks to people still being lazy using Wikipedia as something of an irrefutable source, that misstated fact is being spread far and wide. "I want to make sure this is all on the record for anyone to question or dispute, because I fear that—Wikipedia being what it is—if I simply correct the entries without explanation someone would just change them back 10 seconds later." [CRIMES AGAINST MUSIC]

6 comments

Things Everybody Should Read Right Now Dept. "How I Spread A Lie About Ghostface Killah, or Why You Should Not Trust Goddamn Wikipedia." (NB: A quick Idolator search for "chunky Mario" only turned up an old piece on Perez Hilton. Whew!) [Robotskull]

1 comment

slow on the uptake

32-Year-Old Scorpions Album Cover Inspires FBI Frenzy

Apparently the right wing has been going batshit crazy over the pornographic content on the online Wikipedia (link NSFW), which includes but is not limited to "images of mammary intercourse," "an illustrated list of sex positions," "photos of nude strippers," and other such pieces of filth. (I guess some people really were scarred for life after looking up "sex" in the World Book.) One of the more controversial Wikipedia bits happens to be the non-US cover for the Scorpions' 1976 album Virgin Killer, which has a photo of a young nude girl whose crotch is obscured by a camera-lens crack. The, um, kind of crackpottily biased site WorldNetDaily is claiming that Wikipedia's reproduction of this photo has now attracted the attention of the FBI, who are coming to terms with its content now, 32 years after its initial release and probable availability in record-collector swamps around the country. More »

3:30 PM on Thu May 8 2008
By Maura Johnston
6,292 views, 8 comments

Latest by Professor2: I think that unless Wikipedia or the FBI confirms an investigation, we should assume that WorldNetDaily is lying. (A contact there assures me that they are, in fact, lying. Wikipedia has heard nothing from the FBI.) more »

burning questions

Is Anyone Really Surprised By The "Wikipedia Trumps MySpace For Band Info" Story?

It may be staffed by a bunch of lunatics who make Comic Book Guy seem like a fountain of pedantic restraint, but Yahoo! users apparently prefer Wikipedia to MySpace when looking for information on their favorite artists, according to Billboard. This despite Wikipedia only having data on some tens of thousands of artists, while MySpace boasts more than three million. According to Yahoo! label relations head John Lenac, "The interest that people had to go to MySpace to find out more about their favorite band is waning in favor of going to Wikipedia.... In the last six months, it's surpassed it." While I'm not a Yahoo! searcher, I too have found that Wikipedia is more useful for finding out information on bands. Why? The answers lie in usability. More »

2:15 PM on Mon Mar 24 2008
By Maura Johnston
748 views, 19 comments

Latest by KurticusMaximus: @Catbirdseat: Go download Songbird. Or Amarok, if you run Linux. Both will get you pretty close to that. more »

wikidiots

Wikipedia Search Tool Threatens To Expose Actual Tools

A grad student at CalTech has developed Wikipedia Scanner, a search tool for Wikipedia that allows people to search edits by IP address and see if there are people out there who are trying to spin entries on the site in their (or, rather, their employers') favor. Wired's Threat Level blog is keeping a running diary of egregious self-edits; so far, they've only found one music-related one—the above edit by the country singer Roger Hallmark, who at least is up-front about his shilling.* More »

2:37 PM on Wed Aug 15 2007
By mjohnston
564 views, 3 comments

Latest by dippinkind: ok, this is freaky, my iTunes shuffle just played Mr. Hallmark's "Message To Khomeini" a few hours back and now i see this... are we about to start bombing Iran today, is that what you're telling me, universe? Or are more »

blogs

Will The Real "Creep" Please Stand Up?

As long-time readers and admirers of My Old Kentucky Blog, we were distressed to receive a tip in our inbox, claiming the site lifted significant portions of the Wikipedia entry on Radiohead's "Creep", without giving any credit to the fine, fine nerds who work on Wikipedia. After checking it out, it looks like MOKB jacked not just a few little facts or figures, but entire paragraph-length passages (again, without crediting Wiki). What the hell's wrong with you kids? How hard is it to write 800 original words about Radiohead? That's the only band you ever talk about. More »

6:00 PM on Tue Sep 26 2006
By Brian Raftery
272 views, 13 comments

Latest by jddimitri: C'mon - This is a music blog we're talking about, not the New York Times or Newsweek. People don't go there to read. They go there to download songs. more »