#tv2wikigate
Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 6:52PM Here you can see a clip from Danish TV2 where the hosts talk about why it is dangerous to use Wikipedia. In the clip they go into their own Wikipedia pages and read aloud from them - and they are obviously filled with a lot of mistakes and innuendo. (The clip is in DANISH)
This created a discussion you can follow on Twitter by searching #tv2wikigate and this blog post by twitter user @mygdal. (Great posts in Danish here & here)
@Mygdal writes: "What they actually we’re showing we’re cached versions of the edit they made - since the edit they did actually was reverted back in 4 minutes. So at the time of the broadcast they’re stating that this is their wikipedia entries - when the entries we’re corrected the day before.
They make fun of Wikipedia and try to prove a point - when actually it was Wikipedia’s finest hour. Wikipedia showing how strong a collective participatory system can be."
I think that it is wrong that TV2 changed Wikipedia for the clip without confessing this fact in some way. They altered reality to prove their point and pissed of a lot of people and they shouldn't have.
But more importantly we can now follow how Social Media Networks can spread a message quite quickly and with a Danish case - it will be very interesting to see if this story is picked up by national media through the Twitter noise that has been created.
Do you think it was funny or distastfull?
Thomas Stack
One of the hosts, Anders Breinholt answers (in danish) - pretty good response, feels honest and authentic, well done Anders!
His best move was to link to the Colbert Report:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Wikiality | ||||
| ||||
Now that is funny!
Thomas Stack
The official response from TV2
TV2 Twitter Wikipedia 
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Reader Comments (3)
Even if they don't say it, it's quite obvious that it was themselves (or their collegues) who edited the wikipedia-site. So maybe it wasn't funny, but it proved the point they where trying to make - that anyone can edit a wiki-page.
Louise: What they failed to mention is that the rigorous members of wiki are reverting wrongdoings in wikipedia very fast. They only showed one side of the coin and that's lousy journalism!
I agree with canman