Wikipedia:Wikiality and Other Tripling Elephants

On July 31, 2006 Stephen Colbert's word of the day was "Wikiality" in which he praised Wikipedia's adherence to the principles of "truthiness" and went out to prove it by editing the The Colbert Report recurring elements entry to change his insult about Oregon to say it is Idaho's Portugal and the George Washington entry to claim he did not own slaves—see Special:Contributions/Stephencolbert.

He also encouraged people to edit Wikipedia to claim that the African elephant population has tripled in the past six months. So people did, editing "Loxodonta", "African Forest Elephant", "African Bush Elephant", "Pachydermata", "Babar the Elephant", "White elephant (pachyderm)", "Elephant", Dumbo, "Oregon", "Portugal", "Idaho", "George Washington", "Latchkey kid", "Serial killer", "The Colbert Report", "Stephen Colbert", and "Stephen Colbert (character)" among others.

The discussion at Talk:Elephant and Talk:The Colbert Report got rather heated – see Talk:Elephant/Colbert and Talk:The Colbert Report/Wikiality for the archives.

The incident was covered by the in-house news organ at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-08-07/Wikiality.

Some of the more amusing edits:


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