Wikipedia, Google Show Obama Racial Slur

[sinkingfeeling]

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/02/wikipedia-googl.html

Web surfers who used Google.com to search for information on President Barack Obama on Tuesday afternoon were presented with a racial slur. The slur originated from Obama's Wikipedia entry, after a user had removed all content in Obama's entry and replaced it with three repeated words: a derogatory term for African-Americans.

Wikipedia.com's revision history records show that slur was only live for two minutes, with the Obama page edited to include the slur at 4:44 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (just before midnight ET) and the original content restored at 4:46.

[TheWraith]

1. This happens pretty often on Wikipedia.

Sometimes politically motivated, sometimes just assholes randomly trashing articles. Fortunately, there's a good filtering system in place so that the vandalized articles are fixed quickly.

[Tesha]

2. A huge amount of it simply seems to be kids in study hall with nothing better to do.

Beavis convinces Butthead to edit, say, Obama's artcile just for a lark.

The Wiki vandalism rate actually swings rather noticeably with school
being in and of session around the world.

Tesha