Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-02-10/In the media

In the media

Jeb Bush swings at Wikipedia and connects

Share this

Jeb Bush, currently a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States

On February 8 in Nashua, New Hampshire, US Presidential candidate Jeb Bush took a light-hearted swing at Wikipedia when he suspected the speaker introducing him at an event in New Hampshire of having read his Wikipedia biography:

“

Did you go on Wikipedia to get that introduction? Yeah? So I've got to tell my first story.

It's the story of being introduced by someone, and they were trying to find things they had in common – the guy gets up and says, You know, I'm tired of regular kind of introductions, so I went on Wikipedia to find if I had anything in common with our guest speaker. And he proceeded then to go into this pretty lengthy introduction that I was an avid rock climber and that I had a secret desire to be a movie star. Neither of which is completely true.

I'm from Florida – I mean, we don't have rocks, like you all here have in the Granite State – and I have no interest in being a movie star – you can tell that by my candidacy, can't you?

So I get up and I have to tell the guy the truth, I am not any of this stuff, and it turns out there are people – they're typically, they're probably unemployed kids with student debt that are stuck in their parents' basement, with Cheeto stains on their T-shirts, that haven't been able to get their first job, and so, what they do, they play games to see how long they can edit Wikipedia pages in order to have games with their friends all around the world.

So my advice to you is, if you do have a Wikipedia page, check it once in a while, 'cause you too may be an avid rock climber, or want to be a Hollywood movie star. (video: 5:14 onwards)

”

Investigation shows that for three and a half years Wikipedia did indeed claim that Bush was an avid rock climber. The unsourced claim was introduced by an IP on 10 December 2008, and deleted on 27 July 2012 by an IP address belonging to Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future.

Many other questionable claims have been introduced to Bush's Wikipedia biography over the years; directly adjacent to the rock-climbing claim, for example, the article once briefly asserted that Bush "also, with his limited spare time, raises Wolf cubs and releases them into the wild." That passage lasted less than three hours, when AlisonW deleted it as unsourced – while leaving the adjacent, equally unsourced claim in the article.

The incident was also mentioned in a Wall Street Journal piece.

Bush went on to come in fourth place in the New Hampshire Republican primary with 11 percent of the vote. In fairness to Jeb Bush, the likelihood that the insertion of the rock climbing claim was performed by a kid living in their parents' basement is > 0.

AK

In brief

Gene Weingarten enjoys Wikipedia's ability to serve as a "randomonium".

On the knowledge engine: The Register covers the recent fracas around the knowledge engine. (Feb. 12, Feb. 11) AK
Putting Wales online: Wales Online writes about the work of Jason Evans (Jason.nlw), Wikipedian-in-Residence at The National Library of Wales. (Feb. 9) AK
Longest-running hoax: The Business Insider and the i100 website, owned by The Independent, write about Wikipedia's longest-running hoax, Jack Robichaux, a fictitious 19th-century serial rapist in New Orleans. (Feb. 5, Feb. 4) AK
Randomonium: In The Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Gene Weingarten shares his enjoyment of Wikipedia: "I've been playing a new solitaire-like Internet game involving the Wikipedia "Random articles" option. With each click, the online encyclopedia randomly sends you to one of its millions of pages. I conclude that Wiki random is genuinely random, because it seems to make no effort to be interesting: Roughly 20 percent of the pages I was sent to were about species of moths. The object of the game is to keep doing this, rapidly, until you find a subject that you already know about, which is when the game ends; 23 tries is said to be average. I am currently at 40, and still going, but I’m not bummed out. It has taken me several hours because I'm savoring each site and diverting sideways to promising links." (Feb. 4) AK
Scientific journal copies from Wikipedia: The Telegraph covers another example of an academic publication plagiarising Wikipedia and provides a round-up of earlier cases. (Feb. 2) AK
On Wikipedia's US presidential campaign coverage: The New York Times looks at Wikipedia's coverage of the US presidential campaign. (Feb. 1) AK
Black history: atlasobscura.com covers a black history edit-a-thon. (Jan. 30) AK
Natasha Zouves: Peter Reynosa in The Huffington Post describes how he wrote the Wikipedia page for San Francisco anchor Natasha Zouves. (Jan. 27) AK
Political photography: PetaPixel profiles the political photography of Gage Skidmore (Gage), whose high-quality Creative Commons images of politicians and other celebrities are ubiquitous on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Amazingly, PetaPixel omits all mention of Wikipedia or Wikimedia. (Jan. 26) G

Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or contact the editor.

← Previous "In the media"

Next "In the media" →

In this issue

In the media

Discuss this story

These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

Hmm do we need an additional controlled random from among top 20% of articles as an extra choice. Popularity randomness; topic randomness, etc. Some nice ideas though it isn't truly random at that point, and crowds into the left hand side channel. Though once you have a search result allowing someone to research for a similar article might be some fun. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:30, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Unemployed kids

"they're probably unemployed kids with student debt"

I wonder why. --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:24, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Like Heh. Upvote. Herostratus (talk) 16:10, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Randomonium

The author should try Special:RandomInCategory. Although it would be better if the randomizer would also pick pages from subcategories. --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:30, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I played Randomonium and got really lucky:

My first random article was Jagatipur, a town in Nepal. I have been to Nepal, and got within about 100 miles of that town. But I hadn't heard of it, so I clicked on.
Next was Thatcher Island near Boston. I worked about 12 miles away from that island for several months, and perhaps I even saw it from the coast at one point. But since I didn't know it by name, I clicked again.
Third hit was the 82nd Street MAX light rail stop in Portland, OR. When I lived in Portland, I regularly passed through that station.

My game ended, with a score of 3. --KSmith (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've become lucky, today my first click led me to Land Ho!, a film I've read about before. Brandmeister^talk 17:55, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Took me 40 to land List of airports in Iceland. Lots of villages in Middle East, footballers, albums and TV shows that I have not heard of. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:04, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting that you can win a Pulitzer without knowing the difference between a web site and a web page. Never mind, other quality dailies have used the phrase "web sight". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC).[reply]

What is he talking about?

Is there any evidence that the Jeb Bush Wikipedia article had these things like him wanting to be a movie star? Alexis Ivanov (talk) 16:44, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost article makes it clear that the "rock climbing" claim was in the Wikipedia article. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Note also a number of revdeled edits as well - there is a strong chance than many edits are improper on that BLP. He was, for example, in the category of "sextet sibling groups", described as a Limp Bizkit fan, "pimping all the hoes" and going out with male prostitutes, that his brother was Yasser Arafat etc. All in just the past three months. Collect (talk) 16:19, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Get the latest headlines on your user page — just add {{Signpost-subscription}}.

Home

About