Richard Sherman Wikipedia page vandalized after The Interview
Remember, Wikipedia is crowdsourced and subject to manipulation.
I did not know who Richard Sherman was until last night.
When Twitter exploded with Twit-rage over something Sherman said, I didn’t know what everyone was talking about because I didn’t watch the end of the San Francisco-Seattle football game.
So I searched Sherman’s name and then clicked on his Wikipedia page, and saw this (highlighting added):
Well, that certainly caught my interest, and it wasn’t too hard to find out what happened.
By the time I clicked back on Wikipedia, the “human garbage” entry was gone, replaced by a more neutral analysis.
Looking back at the Edit History of the page, it’s easy to see that the moment after the interview, there were numerous attempts to “vandalize” the page (times are expressed in GMT):
Some of the vandalism was kinda funny:
Some were not:
The page pretty quickly was “protected” by Wikipedia “editors.”
Remember, Wikipedia is a crowdsourced website, and anyone can add anything, subject to monitoring by others. That can be good and bad.
In the case of Sherman, it was for the good that editors could monitor and protect the page from extraneous insults.
In the case of the Elizabeth Warren page, however, this crowdsourcing and monitoring was used to keep out factual information regarding her Cherokee scandal.
So take Wikipedia for what it is worth, the good and the bad.
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Comments
Wikipedia is a good place to start with an unfamiliar, not-controversial topic, because it is a grand source of search terms. That is exactly as far as it goes.
If the information in wikipedia contains a source, it is good for source mining so that you can evaluate the sources used.
I find Wikapedia to be an excellent source as long as the topic is not controversial or the subject of propaganda. Then, it is unreliable.
Richard Kevin Sherman is a head case in the NFL. That’s a surprise.
“Vandalized” Faceberg page? Another surprise.
I’ll be watching the Super Bowl.
The challenge with crowd-sourcing is that the unfortunately necessary gate-keepers themselves naturally have an agenda. Once a person becomes trusted and is given responsibility, it is natural for them to bias their choices in favor of their given ideology.
What happened to the days when arbitrators took seriously their duties to impartiality and it was considered a grievous sin to suffer bias? Was it the SCOTUS that gave America the green light to wear your ideology on your sleeve like some qualification? Wherever it came from, it is a fatal disease if not treated.
The problem is in the way the human mind rationalizes all egotistical actions. Instead of feeling any twinge of remorse that “I’m propagandizing when I should just be putting forth facts – uncomfortable or not,” they tell themselves, “I’m educating the people and setting the record straight.”
I guess there is no humble pie in that household ….
Sherman and Crabtree were trash talking each other the entire game. Anquan Boldin, the other SF wide receiver, is also a constant trash talker during games.
I can forgive Sherman his postgame ugliness given the game had justed ended and he’d just tipped the ball away from Crabtree for the intercept, but if he’s still talking this nastiness today, oh hell no. Grow up, son. Act like you’ve won a game before.
A premier trash talker is the Carolina Panthers wide receiver Steve Smith. He is so adept at getting under opponents’ skin, he typically draws at least one personal foul, often gets opponents to take swings at him. I now forget which game, but this year he drew about three personal fouls and had the opposing defensive backs all twisted up. Hilarious when it works, but not good sportsmanship.
Yeah he basically puffed up at an analyst today. The analyst is, like many other pundits, pompous himself so it’s a vicious cycle. I don’t really care what he said last night or today. It’s a game and these guys should not be our role models..they are entertainers, nothing more.
We have allowed ourselves to become distracted by these entertainers in sports and Hollywood when we need to be holding our politicians to higher standards and paying more attention to them.
Rush Limbaugh was too controversial and said too many things that upset people to be an NFL team co-owner.
I support the NFL in no way what so ever- I live in Seattle and last night was the first game I watched all season – only because I was having dinner with relatives… same will be true of super bowl… and believe me- I’ll be driving that Rush Limbaugh thing home on what a pile of garbage the NFL is. (yes- that will make me a bad guest).
Don’t support organizations that willfully crap on your values.