Wiki Pranking/Colbert for President?

I know we have wrapped up our discussions on Wiki's but I came across an article today that really caught my attention. A little over a year ago, political satirist Stephen Colbert ran a segment on his show called 'Wikiality,' which was intended to point out the unreliability of information gathered from Wiki's. During this segment, Colbert jokingly suggested to his viewers that they edit the Wikipedia entry for 'Elephant' to state that the Elephant population has swollen in the past few years, and stating that this will be an "inconvenient tusk" for environmentalists such as Al Gore.

Although this was intended as a joke, Colbert has a very large and loyal following, and within minutes, the Wikipedia entry for elephants was locked, and the discussion page became flooded with entries discussing Colbert's 'prank.'

Although Colbert's prank was intended to point out the unreliability of Wikipedia, I think it did much more than this. First off, it served as direct advertising and publicity for the wiki. Secondly, I believe that it pointed out the reliability of Wikipedia. The fact that such a large-scale stunt had little or no impact on the content of the wiki page shows the reliability of a lot of Wikipedia content.

Now it is clear that the fact that Wikipedia was able to control this was the unusual high traffic editing the page, or the fact that somebody aware of the stunt must have locked the page, but it shows how high traffic pages are able to resist this vandalism. I pointed out in class a few weeks ago that this is not the case with many lower-traffic pages, as they are moderated much less, and errors are not noticed as frequently. This is a downfall of Wikipedia, but the relative reliability of the high-traffic pages show the benefits of such a useful online tool.

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This is a little less applicable to our course, but i also read that Colbert announced last night that he intends on running for office in the upcoming united States Presidential Election. This is the latest in a string of pranks by Colbert, including the Wiki prank, betting the city of Oshawa, Ontario over a Junior league hockey game, and instructing his 'Colbert Nation' to vote for him on a Hungarian website running a contest that would name a bridge after the winner.

Although this seems like a harmless publicity stunt, I believe that this proves Colbert's political point. Based on his previous stunts, and his rather large following, I am willing to bet that Colbert will receive at least some support from the public. By no means do I feel that he expects to be successful, but I believe that Colbert simply wants to show the public how little voters know (or care) about the electoral process. In order to accomplish this, he does not need a huge number of votes, just the fact that he probably will get votes will prove his point.

Anyways, I know this doesn't exactly apply to our course material, but I felt that it was a great example that illustrates the power of the media over the general public