Did you hear about the young farmer from Dannevirke who got his name added to a Wikipedia list of mythical Japanese monsters, and it ended up appearing in a board game? Stories like this make it seem like Wikipedia’s easy to vandalise; how much can we trust it? How do we detect hoaxes? If we were sociopathic enough to want to get false information into the encyclopaedia and make it stick, what would we need to know? New Zealand Wikipedian at Large Dr Mike Dickison has been travelling the country encouraging the public to improve the accuracy of Wikipedia, but in this one-off exclusive talk he’ll turn things around and reveal the grubby world of making it less accurate.
Date: Fri 17 May
Time: 1:00–2:00
Venue: A1 lecture theatre