Misplaced Pages

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References to Misplaced Pages in culture have increased as more people learn about and use the online encyclopedia project. Many parody Misplaced Pages's openness, with characters vandalising or modifying articles. Still others feature characters using the references as a source, or positively comparing a character's intelligence to Misplaced Pages. Also, the encyclopedia many times isn't used as an encyclopedia at all, but instead serves more as a character trait or even as a game.

Incidents

Landmark

Fox News Channel recently reported, "If you think the middle name of British Prime Minister Tony Blair is 'whoopdeedoo,' you'd not only be wrong, but you probably got your information from Misplaced Pages." The report went on to talk about a tool which allows users to track IP addresses used to edit Misplaced Pages, and listed many surprising locations that have been discovered editing articles related to their locations. An example used in the report was an IP connected to Wal-Mart, which on one occasion had been used to change a statement about Wal-Mart's wages being lower than competing stores (instead stating its wage was almost double federal minimum wage). The report concluded that, although editing of an article by the entity associated with it may damage Misplaced Pages's credibility, in the long run, the organization might gain credibility because of how quickly such edits are reverted.

Date	Nature	Country (of origin)	Title
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	article	United States	"I Must Take Issue With The Misplaced Pages Entry For 'Weird Al' Yankovic", the Onion.
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	comic strip	United States	FoxTrot
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	TV show (satirical)	United States	The Colbert Report, episode 58
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	comic book	United States	The Simpsons Comics, issue 117, "Sandwiches are Forever"
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	TV show (satirical)	United States	The Colbert Report, episode 93
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	TV show (satirical)	United States	The Colbert Report, episode 128
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	music video	United States	"White & Nerdy" music video, by "Weird Al" Yankovic
date unknown	promotion	Australia	Jericho ads
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	commercial	United States	Cisco Systems: Human Network Anthem
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	sitcom	United States	30 Rock: "The Head and the Hair"
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	TV show (satirical)	United Kingdom	Bremner, Bird and Fortune
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	TV show (sport)	United States	SportsCenter
date unknown	novel	United Kingdom	The Righteous Men, Sam Bourne
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	Non-fiction	United States	It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News, Drew Curtis
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	commercial demo	United States	Apple iPhone, Apple Inc.
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	play	United States	The Misplaced Pages Plays
Error in Template:Date table sorting: days must be an integer between 1 and 31	TV show (satrical)	United States	The Colbert Report, episode 302

Title	Description	Relevance
I Must Take Issue With The Misplaced Pages Entry For 'Weird Al' Yankovic	In an article from The Onion, the character Larry Groznic writes an article about how he was banned from Misplaced Pages for starting an edit war on the "Weird Al" Yankovic page, and goes on to criticize the content on the said page.	Having taken place well before the John Seigenthaler Sr. Misplaced Pages biography controversy, it was one of the first major parodies.
FoxTrot	File:Foxtrot wikipedia.jpg	First appearance of Misplaced Pages in a syndicated comic strip.
The Colbert Report, episode 58	Arianna Huffington challenges host Stephen Colbert on his claim that he had coined the word "truthiness". She cited Misplaced Pages, claiming that he had merely "popularized" the term. Regarding her source, Colbert, in character, responded: "Fuck them."	First nationally-broadcast television program to mention Misplaced Pages.
The Simpsons Comics, issue 117	Hank Scorpio, a character from The Simpsons television series, mocks Lisa Simpson for citing her knowledge of him and his illegal activities (which he assumes she simply read from Misplaced Pages) during a prison break scene in the issue. This issue was written by Ty Templeton.	This is the first reference to Misplaced Pages in a comic book.
The Colbert Report, episode 93	Colbert refers to Misplaced Pages as his source of information for research on Sigmund Freud. With his normal sarcastic and deadpan delivery, Colbert's segment "The Wørd" mocked Misplaced Pages's sometimes-questionable information with the screen posting "Even the accurate parts."	Colbert's first scripted reference to Misplaced Pages, a lead into his "Wikiality" piece.
The Colbert Report, episode 128	See also: Consensus reality File:Wikiality.jpg In a July 2006 episode of the satirical comedy The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert announced the neologism wikiality, a portmanteau of the words Misplaced Pages and reality, for his segment "The Wørd." Colbert defined wikiality as "truth by consensus" (rather than fact), modeled after the approval-by-consensus format of Misplaced Pages. He ironically praised Misplaced Pages for following his philosophy of truthiness, in which intuition and consensus is a better reflection of reality than fact: You see, any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true. ... If only the entire body of human knowledge worked this way. And it can, thanks to tonight's word: Wikiality. Now, folks, I'm no fan of reality, and I'm no fan of encyclopedias. I've said it before. Who is Britannica to tell me that George Washington had slaves? If I want to say he didn't, that's my right. And now, thanks to Misplaced Pages, it's also a fact. We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true. ... What we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge. According to Colbert, together "we can all create a reality that we all can agree on; the reality that we just agreed on." During the segment, he joked "I love Misplaced Pages... any site that's got a longer entry on truthiness than on Lutherans has its priorities straight." Colbert also used the segment to satirize the more general issue of whether the repetition of statements in the media leads people to believe they are true. The piece was introduced with the tagline, "The Revolution Will Not Be Verified," referencing the lack of objective verification seen in some articles. Colbert suggested that viewers change the elephant page to state that the number of African elephants has tripled in the last six months. The suggestion resulted in numerous incorrect changes to Misplaced Pages articles related to elephants and Africa. Misplaced Pages administrators subsequently restricted edits to the pages by anonymous and newly created users. Colbert went on to type on a laptop facing away from the camera, claiming to be making the edits to the pages himself. In addition, initial edits to Misplaced Pages corresponding to these claimed "facts" were made by a user named Stephencolbert. Thus, many believe Colbert himself vandalized several Misplaced Pages pages at the time he was encouraging other users to do the same. The account, whether it was Stephen Colbert himself or someone posing as him, has been blocked from Misplaced Pages indefinitely. The account was blocked for violating Misplaced Pages's username policies, which state that using the names of celebrities as login names is inappropriate. The account will be reopened if and when Colbert or Comedy Central confirm its identity.	Global Language Monitor, which tracks trends in languages, named wikiality and truthiness the top T.V. buzzwords for 2006. Shortly after the episode aired, a fan-created Misplaced Pages parody site opened at Wikiality.com, inspired by the term. On October 19 2006, the term was mentioned again on the show, this time with Wikiality.com given as the url for Misplaced Pages.
White & Nerdy	The character who is implied to be the nerd says that editing Misplaced Pages is one of his nerdy activities. In the video, Al is shown editing the article Atlantic Records by typing in large letters YOU SUCK. Thus Al takes revenge on the record company for refusing to let him include "You're Pitiful," a parody of James Blunt's song "You're Beautiful", on his new album. This has prompted copycat vandalism of the Atlantic Records page, which resulted in the page's being semi-protected. Yankovic has said "I don't officially approve of , but on a certain level it does amuse me."	This may be the first time a music video showed the website, as well as the first time a song mentioned the website. The song was also Yankovic's first career Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. It reached #1 at the U.S. iTunes Store, and peaked at #1 on VH1's top 20 video countdown.
Jericho ads	Following Jericho episodes on Network 10 in Australia, a promotion would appear encouraging viewers to log onto Misplaced Pages and search for "Jericho (tv series)" for proof of the hype and theories surrounding the show.	This is the first station advertisement to encourage people to search Misplaced Pages for their product.
Cisco Systems	A TV advertisement for Cisco Systems shows a young child with a laptop, the Misplaced Pages logo clearly visible on the screen. Part of their "Human Network Anthem" ad campaign.	First television advertisement showing Misplaced Pages as part of the plot line.
30 Rock	While Tracy Jordan, James "Toofer" Spurlock and Frank Rossitano are working to complete Jordan's autobiography within a single day, Rossitano finds Jordan's Misplaced Pages article while using the Internet on his laptop. The article says Jordan was discovered after doing stand-up comedy at the Apollo Theater in 1984, and Jordan, though stating he has no recollection of this, tells the two to add it to the book.	First sitcom series reference.
Bremner, Bird and Fortune	A sketch about the 10 most popular, yet unread books, featuring a voice over talking about the plots of the books, which seem to constantly refer to aliens. At the end of the sketch it says that the information came from Misplaced Pages.	First mention in a British satirical comedy programme.
SportsCenter	After citing a stat about Houston Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt, anchor Kenny Mayne jokingly gave credit to Misplaced Pages for providing the number.	First recorded reference from a sports highlight show.
The Righteous Men	In the 2006 Da Vinci Code style novel The Righteous Men, Misplaced Pages features as an academic style encyclopedia.	First known reference in fictional literature.
It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News	This book, which examins media bias, mainly about stories which do not count as news, Curtis writes: "Incidentally, one of the more surprising things I discovered while researching the articles for this book is that a number of them exactly mirrored a Misplaced Pages entry on the same subject. I didn't find any exact copies of Misplaced Pages in the articles in this book, but the structure often was the same and used the same citations in the same places. If I had to guess, I'd say that half of all the "original" articles covered in this book are Misplaced Pages entry rewrites. If not more. It certainly makes me wonder about the rest of the articles I didn't research. Misplaced Pages accuracy concerns aside, that's just not cool. Or perhaps that's how the Misplaced Pages articles were generated in the first place. Due to the obscurity of certain details in some of the articles, and the fact that none of those details showed up in a Google search on the same subject, I am more inclined to believe reporters borrow heavily from Misplaced Pages, and not the other way around."	First known appearance in a book criticising the mass media, referencing Misplaced Pages.
Apple iPhone	In the demonstration for the iPhone's internet capabilities, the Misplaced Pages page for the iPod is shown, along with a link in the user's bookmarks.	First known reference in a multinational product demonstration by a Media Conglomerate.
The Misplaced Pages Plays	Seventeen short plays, inspired by Misplaced Pages entries.	First play known to highlight Misplaced Pages.
The Colbert Report, episode 302	On August 21, 2007, Colbert attacked WikiScanner, a website that tracks down people who make anonymous edits on Misplaced Pages, claiming that it is an invasion of privacy, particularly for corporations and it attacks, "Self-invention". He highlighted a case where Pepsi edited their entry by removing "Long-term health effects" from their article. This resulted in his "Wørd" being, "Self-Determination", claiming that everyone on the internet should be anonymous and should not be forced to give away their true identity. Colbert later discribed Misplaced Pages as, "Second Life for corporations," saying if a corporations wants to pretend to be someone else online, then that is their business.	First nationally-broadcast television program to mention WikiScanner.

Contextual

Citations of Misplaced Pages in culture

During a debate on Québécois nationhood in the Canadian House of Commons on November 27, 2006, Conservative Member of Parliament Scott Reid mentioned Misplaced Pages.

In the July 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine, an article on swarm intelligence, both in nature and as a method used by humans, mentions Misplaced Pages as an example.

Inaccuracies on Misplaced Pages in culture

Misplaced Pages was satirized in The Onion with a front-page article ("Misplaced Pages Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence", July 2006), alluding to perceptions that the publicly editable site is an unreliable source of information.

Various people including Jeremy Clarkson, Sir Ian McKellen, Patrick Stump, and Mitch Albom have criticized Misplaced Pages's articles about themselves.

In 2007 Lyttle Lytton Contest, where the object is to come up with an opening sentence for a novel, a phrase from the article on Fukutsuru ("Fukutsuru died in 2005 but his frozen sperm lived on for people's benefit") won the prize in Found category.

Misplaced Pages as a character trait

In 2006, commenting to The New York Times on the demands on Central Intelligence Agency analysts to produce instant information, John E. McLaughlin, former acting U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, stated, "intelligence analysts end up being the Misplaced Pages of Washington".

An altmuslim.com review of a new television series, Sleeper Cell, about terrorists noted that the characters routinely gave detailed background of events in the history of Islam and stated, "no one, and I assume even terrorists, talks like a walking Misplaced Pages."

Notes

1. Namely "Loxodonta", "African Forest Elephant", "African Bush Elephant", "Pachydermata", "Babar the Elephant", "Elephant", "Oregon", "George Washington", "Latchkey kid", "Serial killer", "Hitler", "The Colbert Report" and "Stephen Colbert" are/were temporarily protected. "Mûmak" (formerly at "Oliphaunt") has also been vandalized.

References and footnotes

1. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/37314
2. Note that the song was leaked on the Internet almost a month prior, on August 27, 2006.
3. The Colbert Report, "Faith", Comedy Central, March 1 2006.
4. An exact citation of the Misplaced Pages referencing passage of The Simpsons Comics #117:

   Lisa: Say, aren't you Hank Scorpio, the criminal mastermind?

   Hank: I prefer the term "Entrepreneurial mastermind", but yes, that's me.

   Lisa: You blackmailed the federal government into giving you control of the American east coast. Now everyone thinks you are dead.

   Hank: Aren't you adorable? We're all about to be shot as escaped prisoners, and you're reciting my entry in the Misplaced Pages. I hope you're proud of her, Homer. She's great!

5. http://www.noisetosignal.org/comics/2006/05/simpsons-comics-117.php
6. The Colbert Report, "Superegomaniac", Comedy Central, May 9 2006.
7. The Colbert Report / Comedy Central recording of The WØRD "Wikiality", Comedy Central, July 31 2006.
8. YouTube recording of The Colbert Report, "Wikiality", Comedy Central, July 31 2006.
9. "Colbert Causes Chaos on Misplaced Pages". Newsvine. August 1 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-28. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
10. ""Truthiness," "Wikiality" named TV words of year". Reuters. August 27 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-28. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
11. "'Truthiness' and 'Wikiality' Named Top Television Buzzwords of 2006 Followed by 'Katrina', 'Katie,' and 'Dr. McDreamy'". Global Language Monitor. August 27 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-28. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. White & Nerdy lyrics:

    My ergonomic keyboard never leaves me bored

    Shopping online for deals on some writable media

    I edit Misplaced Pages

    I memorized Holy Grail really well

    I can recite it right now and have you ROTFLOL

13. Adams, Cameron. "Weird Al Yankovic." Herald Sun, October 5, 2006.
14. BBC News, Harry Potter book "often unread" Accessed on 1 April 2007.
15. Curtis, Drew (2007-05-31). "It's Not News It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News: Chapter 1". Retrieved 2007-08-12. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
16. "The Misplaced Pages Plays Will Be Seen at the Ars Nova in August", Playbill.
17. ""The Wørd" - Self-Determination". Comedy Central. 2007-08-21. Retrieved 2007-08-22.
18. Hansard, November 27, 2006.
19. "Swarm Theory" by Peter Miller, National Geographic Magazine, July 2007
20. "Misplaced Pages Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence". The Onion. 2006. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help); Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
21. Clarkson, Jeremy (2006). "Lexus GS 450h SE-L Independence". Times Online. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help); Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
22. Empire Magazine, May 2006.
23. "The 2007 Lyttle Lytton Contest". Retrieved 2007-06-12.
24. Weiner, Tim (2006-05-14). "Langley, We Have a Problem". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-06-26.
25. Ali, Wajahat (2006-01-16). "Sleeping Cell". altmuslim.com.

• In popular culture
• Misplaced Pages