Legatissimo.info

A Morality WikiPlay in Four Tabulated Acts

For the record, I am Kylestoneman. And any time I find Gullibleinfo on Wikipedia I edit it out.

The Check the Domain Award
A site called Gullible.info that serves up fake trivia saw one of its invented factoids end up in a story in the Guardian. Here’s the original June 2005 post from Gullible.info:

LSD guru Timothy Leary claimed to have discovered an extra primary color he referred to as "gendale.”

From there it made its way into a Wikipedia bio of Leary (it has since been removed) and then in April it showed up in a Guardian article:

He exhorted America to "turn on, tune in and drop out” and claimed to have discovered a new primary colour – which he called gendale. Now Timothy Leary, the eccentric spokesman of the 1960s counter-culture, is to become the subject of a Hollywood movie.

Did you also know that “gullible” is not in the dictionary? Link

Pity the poor passenger who recently grounded an American Airlines flight thanks to an excessive amount of — hmm, how to say this politely — farting. Apparently suffering from an unspecified medical condition, she attempted to hide the smell by lighting matches, which is illegal on planes for obvious reasons. Besides being a bad idea in a common-sense kind of way (ie, lighting matches on planes might arouse suspicion), it turns out that lighting one’s farts can be an extremely dangerous activity in and of itself.

A survey from a few years back indicated that about a quarter of people who tried to light their flatulence (or, if you want to get fancy, their flatus) got burned doing it. It’s possible to be seriously injured: there have been cases of the flame backing up into the colon and causing internal burns. (It’s the same reason you don’t want to drop lit matches into suspicious-looking puddles at the gas station.) What’s more, it’s been reported that as many as a third of burn-related hospital visits by males aged 13 to 20 are fart-burn-related. (Could this really be true? Sure, if the internet says so.)

Is this true or just another gullible story?

The Software Publishing Association estimates that on average the chance of a software patch causing crashes or serious compatibility problems is seven times greater than the likelihood of running into the bug or security issue which the patch was intended to fix.

If it's not true, it does what all the best gullible quotes do, makes you stop in your tracks and consider it possible. And, like the very best, if it isn't true, you want it to be. Which may go to show that I have no idea whether gullible is truly for the gullible or absolutely true stuff. I can live with either.

Today, our hearts beat reluctantly, weighted by the burden of a shameful failure and bound by the chains of a deception gone awry. It is unfortunate that we are writing this in the midst of what has been a fantastic year for everyone's favorite "trivia destination": Readership is up 12 times from what it was this time last year, and our google module is now installed on 18 percent of all Google custom homepages [Ed. note: these "facts" are from Gullible.info, .:. they are not true]. Yes, if it weren't for a few recently transpired events, this may have very well been a day of celebration. Instead, it is a bitter time of self-loathing and tears.

However, you might still be as unaware of the situation as all of us here at Gullible.info were until a few days ago; we will elaborate.

Here at Gullible.info we pride ourselves on being a clearing house for fascinating and tantalizing tidbits. In a word: trivia! Early last month, our automated fact extracting system found a fascinating bit of information from a TV broadcast, The Colbert Report: "The elephant population has tripled in the last six months." Needless to say, this piqued our interests. After a quick trip to Wikipedia to verify its authenticity, the "fact" was queued up to run on August 24, 2006.

It was only later that we learned from our diligent readers that the elephant population had not tripled in the last six months. What's more, it would be physically impossible for this to happen, given the long gestation periods of pachyderms.

Naturally we were shocked, as you must be, too. How could we have made such an egregious mistake? The answer it turns out, was far more sinister than just a simple error. Gullible.info was deliberately misled by Stephen Colbert, host of the wildly popular Colbert Report.

Mr. Colbert, under the guise of "discussing" the nature of Wikipedia, goaded his loyal legions into editing pages about elephants to include a statement, which he said "would be a real blow to the environmentalists." Colbert even admits his information wasn't necessarily grounded in reality (as he said: "I don't know if that's actually true"). But what was the partisan lie he pushed? You guessed it... "The elephant population has tripled in the last six months."

Readers: We have let you down, and for this our hearts ache. You turn to us for whimsey and fancy, but instead we gave you candies made of mud. In no way are we trying to avoid our deserved responsibility in this matter; had we been more precise in our practices this whole situation could have been avoided. On the other hand, would you stand by a man who poisoned our water supply as Mr. Colbert has poisoned our information supply? I wouldn't go as far as to use the phrase "information terrorist," but that's what some insiders have been calling this little stunt.

Stephen Colbert: shame on you. You have a duty to the American people you must uphold. After all, were you not the man who coined the word "truthiness?"

-The Hardworking Team at Gullible.info

P.S., We have begun an internal review of our entire research and fact checking procedures, in case those in an information dissemination role, like Stephen Colbert, learn no lessons from all this.

P.P.S., In addition to more rigorous fact checking, we will also be marking our dubious mistakes with this:

Finally, and again, we are so sorry for this terrible mistake. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please let us know.

name: Justin

type of message: Negative

comments: For the records I think you are adding to the dissemination of false information. Your "social experiment" doesnt prove anything or teach anything new. So thanks for wasting peoples time.

To which I replied:

Justin-

Thanks for taking the time to write in and bring up an interesting point. I would be amiss not to inform you that it is a question I wrestle with, from time to time. And every time I consider the situation, I always end up at the same conclusion: Gullible.info does much more good than harm.

You'll probably be quick to dismiss me, that's fine, I don't really even expect you to read all of this. It seems as if you have made up your mind. But you should realize that the points that I'm about to present are not just spur of the moment justifications, but meticulously considered arguments in favor of something that seems counter intuitive.

First and foremost, Gullible.info is a learning experience for many people. Too often people make the assumption that information online is immediately on par with information found in other media. This, however, is not true. Consider: http://martinlutherking.org. At first glance this appears to be a website commemorating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King. It has no disclaimer, it has only one link at the bottom of the site, which might give someone pause: "Hosted by Stormfront."

Martinlutherking.org isn't a site run to educate people about the incredible change MLK Jr. helped to bring about in the world. It is a smear site run by the despicably racist, white supremacist group Stormfront White Nationalist Community. If you want to discuss negative implications of information on the internet, Stormfront.org would be a great place to start. However, if you were to write them an email such as the one you have sent me, I'm confident it would not be met with a satisfactory response.

But this is a broader point than just one hate site. The fact is, the nature of information dissemination is changing, and as a result society must change how it interfaces with information as well. Previously, there was a high cost of gathering and publishing information. This threshold cost helped to ensure that information was vetted -- checked for accuracy -- before it was distributed. Now, as those costs lower, it is possible for anyone -- digital divide aside -- to publish information online. There are only a handful of people who think this is a bad thing. I, for one, am not one of those people. We, as a networked society, have access to exponentially expanding amounts of information, and I think that makes us much better off. But that transition must be accompanied by changes in our patterns of activity.

Because information is not vetted prior to publishing, information consumers must take that burden on themselves. We, the people who access information, are now responsible for deciding if the information has merit. The problem here is that for thousands of years we've grown accustom pre-considered information, so people aren't aware that this is a step they have to take themselves.

Now, what would a justification of Gullible.info be without a mention of Gullible.info? Not much. So here's where it comes together. Gullible.info is a "trivia" site... trivia of course being defined as "Insignificant or inessential matters; trifles." (dictionary.com). Considering that, if someone comes to the site, fails to understand the concept, and then believes that ants do not perceive gravity, I would be hard pressed to think of a way that their life would be negatively impacted in any sort of a meaningful way. (For the record, that is not true of MartinLutherKing.org.)

Gullible.info serves to illustrate this need in an interesting and engaging way. We've got tens of thousands of daily visitors, most of whom understand the nature of the site, and continue visiting anyway. We have hundreds of thousands of daily hits on our Google module. A few people even say they keep it on their custom homepage to continuously remind them about the new responsibilities they have in an information-abundant environment. I know of teachers and librarians who use the site as a key part of lesson plans about information literacy.

At any rate, I hope this clears up some of my reasoning for you. I probably haven't yet convinced you that the site is an overwhelmingly positive thing (as I believe it to be), but hopefully you realize that it does have redeeming value. Feel free to write back if you'd like.

-Kyle

This chap made a fairly long blog post about being mislead by Gullible.info.

An entire website of mostly plausible factoids, however, doesn't teach a person do or expect good research from people who present factoids. Personally, once I figured out that the site was just a series of lies, I lost interest in it and went looking for new sources of fun trivia.
I feel foolish, of course, for not figuring the site out sooner and sending some of the statements to friends assuming they were true. (Apologies, everyone!) I am irritated at having been tricked as well. And I'm also rankled a little at the condescending, cynical nature of the creator's statements.
Yes, ha ha, I believed the site. Tres amusant.
Again, I conceed that at some point, one would have to do some additional research or ask for verification and that's just what I did. But have I learned this overarching lesson to question everything I see on the internet? Not really. I'm just kind of irritated by that guy.

I'd write back a full response, but I think I've touched on all the issues that he brought up before Here and here.

A few weeks back I made a post about how a "fact" from Gullible.info made it into an article in the Guardian UK, via Wikipedia. Basically what happened is some reporter probably didn't want to be bothered with earning their paycheck, so they just lifted material from the Wikipedia page on Timothy Leary. It was shoddy journalism for a reporter to include unverified information from a Wikipedia page in what is supposed to be a credible news source.

And now, nearly three weeks after I emailed them and told them their article contained completely fabricated information, it hasn't been corrected. The lede still reads:

He exhorted America to "turn on, tune in and drop out" and claimed to have discovered a new primary colour - which he called gendale. Now Timothy Leary, the eccentric spokesman of the 1960s counter-culture, is to become the subject of a Hollywood movie.

I received one reply to my email about this error:

Your link to the article doesn't connect and I can't find such an article in our archive. Do you have some more information to help me find it?

Best wishes,
Murray Armstrong

Apparently because the URL had a line break in it (between the http:// and the domain) it didn't get parsed into a link, and it seems as if copying and pasting is out of the question. I emailed back a link that wouldn't break, but I still haven't heard anything.

Of course, no one is keeping score when it comes to the accuracy of Wikipedia, but for the record, I was able to make the correction to the Wikipedia page myself.

(Note: Gullible.info is also hosting a discussion about the "color," if you're interested.)

Update: The mistake has been corrected, the fabricated info is now gone. Huzzah!

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