Fake Wikipedia entry on Bicholim Conflict finally deleted after five years

January 03, 2013

Consider this another cautionary tale against believing everything you read on Wikipedia, or the Internet in general. Wikipedia's volunteer editors recently removed an elaborate article that purported to describe the “Bicholim Conflict.” The 4,500-word article spoke of an undeclared war between colonial Portugal and India's Maratha Empire that eventually ended in a peace treaty, laying the groundwork for the independent Indian state of Goa. As the Daily Dot reports, that story is completely bogus. There was no Bicholim Conflict. The article's footnotes cited books that don't exist. And yet, the entry was labeled a “Good Article” by editors just two months after its creation in July 2007. It did fail to receive the coveted “Featured Article” status five years ago because of its reliance on a small number of weak sources, but that's the closest editors came to raising a skeptical eyebrow until last month, when an editor named ShelfSkewed took a closer look at the article's footnotes and found no real sources. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2023647/fake-wikipedia-entry-on-bicholim-conflict-finally-deleted-after-five-years.html