I’ve finally had it with The Register. I’ve been told many times before that the quality of their articles is rubbish, with plenty of bias thrown in but I didn’t think it was that bad. But now I’ve been pushed over the edge by the latest article in Andrew Orlowski’s one-man crusade against Wikipedia.
The article concerned talks about what happened on Wednesday when Scott Mills vandalised a Wikipedia article on air, thus prompting a flood of vandalism from listeners to every article related to Radio 1. It’s so full of factual inaccuracies and fabrication that it’s almost laughable.
No they didn’t, they defaced one entry only: Edith Bowman. This is easy to see once you know their external IP address.
They themselves added the Harry Belafonte reference, shortly before mentioning it on air.
No it didn’t: it was being constantly removed and when the pages were locked it was removed completely. I know this because I was there, helping to control the tide of vandalism and requesting that the pages concerned be locked.
What Orlowski failed to mention, in his hurry to make Wikipedia look like an unpoliced mess of nonsense, was that many user accounts were blocked as a result of the vandalism with many more receiving (and heeding) promptly delivered warnings to stop. Scott himself was given a vandalism warning for his initial vandalism and told that his IP would be blocked if he continued to vandalise articles. I know this because:
- he read it out word-for-word on the show and
- because I posted it.
I now agree with popular opinion about The Register and about Orlowski. I shall be getting my tech news elsewhere from now on.
