Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-08-30/In the media

Fake news comes in many varieties, and the fakers use Wikipedia to spread it. This month's examples include a fake plot summary of a fictionalized film retelling the story of the very real Charles Manson, and a reporter anonymously vandalizing a Wikipedia article to start media coverage on a politician he doesn't like. The simple censorship of a town's history of racial violence almost looks benign, or at least honest, in comparison.

• Edit warring over a made-up plot summary, complicated by spoilers: The Verge, Esquire, and other media reported on an edit war over the Wikipedia article about the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The Quentin Tarantino production is about the real-life Charles Manson, albeit with a wildly a-historical ending. The source of the conflict? A plot summary with an ending as wildly divergent from the film as the film is wildly divergent from the actual events. It seems that rather than reveal spoilers, an editor simply made something up. Editors who had seen the screening at the Cannes Film Festival objected that the content was bogus, yet did not wish to reveal the true ending as the film had not yet been released in theaters. The resulting edit war which saw the false summary removed and restored, the section of the article removed entirely and then restored, died out once the film was released in theaters and editors who had not seen the advance screening could confirm that the erroneous summary was indeed erroneous.-3f
• John Delaney, RIP 2019?: On July 30, 2019, at the second round of 2020 Democratic presidential debates, former U.S. Representative and presidential candidate John Delaney was excoriated by Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren after he criticized progressives, including Warren, for proposing policies that he deemed "dead on arrival." Later that night, an anonymous vandal edited Delaney's biography on the English Wikipedia declaring that Delaney died, slain by Warren. The edit was reverted within three minutes and the article protected the next minute. A reporter for The Young Turks finished tweeting a screenshot of the vandalism the minute after. The vandalism and the tweet were reported by several seemingly reliable news sources, including USA Today, Mashable, and WKYC. When asked by The Signpost about the vandalism the reporter did not deny that he vandalized the article stating "I thought it was funny. Presidential debates are largely substance-free spectacle so no, I don’t think there’s much more to report."-S
• The right to forget?: Wikipedia entries won't let Harrison shed unsavory past. Representatives and residents of the town of Harrison, Arkansas, removed material on its history of racial violence which goes back more than a century. They believe that the material doesn't reflect the current reality of the town. Mayor Jerry Jackson was quoted saying "I believe Harrison is probably the most non-racist small town in America because we have had this image to deal with for so long." This type of censorship results in fake history rather than fake news, but the results are much the same. We prefer the standard view of historians, the right to remember, over the right to forget.-S
• Propaganda lives on as history: Dalton Delan describes a cold war propaganda battle about Yellow rain in The Unspin Room: A story lost to history – or at least to Wikipedia in The Berkshire Eagle. At this late date it may be impossible to determine which version of events is correct. Was the yellow rain chemical warfare or bee poop? The Wikipedia article, strangely enough, clearly favors the bee poop hypothesis.-S