Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-06-13/In the news

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lol @ the Palin/Colbert story.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:23, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Really love the British Wikipedia "cleanser". Livened the day up a bit.--The wikifyer's corner 06:26, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if Colbert's actions amount to incitement to computer trespass? Rich Farmbrough, 17:45, 15 June 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Well, there's a comment on the Colbert blog about this. As a Kiwi with no particular political opinions I have no particular interest in Palin or her controversies. But I noticed with interest that comment on Colbert's blog which pointed out that Revere himself, in a letter recapitulating the events, did in fact say that he had warned the British not to proceed because the American forces were too strong.

The link given is on a Wiki blacklist so I can't post it here, but it resolves to the archive <http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=99&img_step=1&tpc=&pid=&mode=transcript&tpc=&pid=#page1>. There one finds a 'Letter from Paul Revere to Jeremy Belknap' narrating some events surrounding the ride which Revere had not seen in any previous history. It includes this tidbit concerning British officers who stopped him on the way:

"(A British officer) demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up."

Which means Palin was correct to assert that Revere had warned the British not to come, the Americans were too strong! The question is, would posting a link to that be Original Research as complained of? It seems to me not. It is after all a secondary source quoting an accessible primary.

--Sdoradus (talk) 05:33, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Palin/Revere story parrots the claim of the left-wing blogosphere that Palin supporters edited "the article about Revere, to better suit her version of the events." This may have happened, but my own cursory look at the Revere article suggested that the opposite was true. It seemed to me that Palin critics, rather than Palin fans, were most active trying to get her version of events into the article, in order to make her look bad. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not really interested enough to go through the edit history to find out. However, I would have been interested in reading a Signpost analysis of the edits in question, rather than the uncritical sneer at Palin supporters that we got. Perhaps this is an example of a classic pitfall of biased journalism: a story that is too good to check. Has anyone actually examined the edits? —Kevin Myers 10:36, 17 June 2011 (UTC) (Full disclosure: I'm not a Palin supporter.)[reply]

I suspect you're right. jorgenev 14:54, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]