How old is Olivia Colman?

Because no one else is doing it--not even the media.
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CrowsNest
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How old is Olivia Colman?

Post by CrowsNest » Wed Jan 30, 2019 6:51 pm

A classic example of how the Wikipedians cannot be trusted to judge the reliability of media outlets in the slightest.

Beloved British actor Colman has been in the news recently, claiming she once had a battle with Wikipedia over what her correct age is. She made the claims in a podcast hosted by David Tennant, who is obviously not an independent party not a regulated media outlet, so is unlikely to have fact checked her claim, and the media simply reported what she said, because celebrity says stuff sells newspapers. The Wikipedians are perplexed, because they can find no evidence to verify her claims this ever happened.

Their checks revealed they don't have the first clue what they are doing. All they have done is search the revision history of her Wikipedia biography, when the error could have easily been made elsewhere in Wikipedia, or even one of their sister sites, such as Wikinews. It could even have been permanently deleted from the history as harmful, it it is only because I know where to look, that I can rule that out. Nobody there has said a word about that possibility though, suggesting it hasn't even crossed their minds. They were perhaps misled by the fact some of the reports include screenshots of her Wikipedia biography, but that is no guarantee she meant that page. People who know how the media works, would not be so easily misled.

The best indication the Wikipedians don't understand how the media works, and thus can't be trusted to comment on issues of their reliability, is their assumption that the media should not have reported this story until they had independently verified Colman's claims. In reality, for something as trivial as this, where nobody is potentially being defamed, and with it being a well known fact that Wikipedia is often factually inaccurate, and really rubbish at handling complaints like Colman's, and that their legal corporate owner disavows all responsibility for incorrect content (so have no legal standing to complain about possible inaccurate media reports about incorrect information), there is no way a newspaper is going to spend any time fact checking here. It is unwarranted on all grounds, legal, commercial, and even ethical. By being explicit that all they were doing was repeating what Colman had said on a podcast, they fulfilled all their journalistic obligations to readers and indeed to Wikipedia.

There was lots of detail in Colman's recollections of events, enough to give them several ways to verify it other than searching the page history, yet none of them has even tried. None has even suggested contacted Colman herself, for further clarification. Revealing their total ignorance of the media, once they had exhausted their only line of inquiry, the page history, the entire world was treated to the sight of a Wikipedia Administrator claiming that The Independent is the British equivalent of the National Enquirer. He said that as he was literally whining about people who don't fact check. And of course, the Wikipedians singled out the Mail for criticism, even though there is nothing differentiating their handling of the story over any of the supposed reliable sources (except, ironically, that their story gave the reader far more background information on Colman, revealing what the Wikipedians really hate about the Mail, their skill at serving their market in ways far superior to other titles).

On a final note, with reference to the thread title, now you have the understanding that the Wikipedians now seem to be quite sure Colman is wrong, and therefore the outlets reporting her story are unreliable by their own made up standards because they did not fact check, they have incredibly ignored their own findings and used these stories as the source for Colman's real age, in her Wikipedia biography.

Let that sink in. On Wikipedia, right now, even after it has been the source of controversy, according to the Wikipedians ever trustworthy use of source, the actual source for Colman's correct age now, is Colman's words, reported without independent verification, in stories that contain other content from Colman that the Wikipedians claim is false and would fail independent verification. They even added two of the stories as references, presumably to make it seen more trustworthy, even though they have already realised the ultimate source of both is the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =880646100

You can't make this shit up.

This is Wikipedia. Stupid is their thing.

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Re: How old is Olivia Colman?

Post by CrowsNest » Thu Jan 31, 2019 6:15 pm

The Wikipedia newsletter.....
It would be a good story if it were true, but Wikipedia editors have thoroughly debunked Colman's claim in a discussion at Talk:Olivia Colman.
How can you thoroughly debunk something when you haven't even clarified the specifics of the claim?

Further proof that Wikipedians are just as shit at being journalists as they are at analysing journalism.

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Re: How old is Olivia Colman?

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Mar 07, 2019 6:54 am

just noticed this--it reminds me of something in the manuscript of the book (the paid editing chapter which was mostly my work).
British comedian Karl Pilkington edited his own article, fellow comedian Adrian Edmonson begged to have his bio corrected in 2012 (and was mocked), and TV actresses Felicia Day and Michele Boyd attempted to remove their dates of birth in 2008 (and failed).

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Re: How old is Olivia Colman?

Post by Graaf Statler » Thu Mar 07, 2019 12:13 pm

CrowsNest wrote:Further proof that Wikipedians are just as shit at being journalists as they are at analysing journalism.

They are of course shitty as hell. There are so many scandals, there is so much complete wasting of donor money, there's such a lot of nonsense told in all these years. Eric even wrote a book about it. But journalists.... no, they are blind and lazy and I suppose glad Wikipedia exist otherwise they had to work. Letting do voluntaries what is support to be your work is of course a lot easier.

I absolute blame the press for the debacle called Wikipedia, on a large scale they have their duty and task neglected. And I suppose in that way they are exacte trapped in the same wiki hotel in California where you never can leave you have checked out. But I asure you, I have seen that in the crisis around Greece one day someone find that door. It is just a matter of time till this complete house of cards based on nothing collaps.

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Re: How old is Olivia Colman?

Post by Strelnikov » Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:57 am

CrowsNest wrote:A classic example of how the Wikipedians cannot be trusted to judge the reliability of media outlets in the slightest.

Beloved British actor Colman has been in the news recently, claiming she once had a battle with Wikipedia over what her correct age is. She made the claims in a podcast hosted by David Tennant, who is obviously not an independent party not a regulated media outlet, so is unlikely to have fact checked her claim, and the media simply reported what she said, because celebrity says stuff sells newspapers. The Wikipedians are perplexed, because they can find no evidence to verify her claims this ever happened.

Their checks revealed they don't have the first clue what they are doing. All they have done is search the revision history of her Wikipedia biography, when the error could have easily been made elsewhere in Wikipedia, or even one of their sister sites, such as Wikinews. It could even have been permanently deleted from the history as harmful, it it is only because I know where to look, that I can rule that out. Nobody there has said a word about that possibility though, suggesting it hasn't even crossed their minds. They were perhaps misled by the fact some of the reports include screenshots of her Wikipedia biography, but that is no guarantee she meant that page. People who know how the media works, would not be so easily misled.

The best indication the Wikipedians don't understand how the media works, and thus can't be trusted to comment on issues of their reliability, is their assumption that the media should not have reported this story until they had independently verified Colman's claims. In reality, for something as trivial as this, where nobody is potentially being defamed, and with it being a well known fact that Wikipedia is often factually inaccurate, and really rubbish at handling complaints like Colman's, and that their legal corporate owner disavows all responsibility for incorrect content (so have no legal standing to complain about possible inaccurate media reports about incorrect information), there is no way a newspaper is going to spend any time fact checking here. It is unwarranted on all grounds, legal, commercial, and even ethical. By being explicit that all they were doing was repeating what Colman had said on a podcast, they fulfilled all their journalistic obligations to readers and indeed to Wikipedia.

There was lots of detail in Colman's recollections of events, enough to give them several ways to verify it other than searching the page history, yet none of them has even tried. None has even suggested contacted Colman herself, for further clarification. Revealing their total ignorance of the media, once they had exhausted their only line of inquiry, the page history, the entire world was treated to the sight of a Wikipedia Administrator claiming that The Independent is the British equivalent of the National Enquirer. He said that as he was literally whining about people who don't fact check. And of course, the Wikipedians singled out the Mail for criticism, even though there is nothing differentiating their handling of the story over any of the supposed reliable sources (except, ironically, that their story gave the reader far more background information on Colman, revealing what the Wikipedians really hate about the Mail, their skill at serving their market in ways far superior to other titles).

On a final note, with reference to the thread title, now you have the understanding that the Wikipedians now seem to be quite sure Colman is wrong, and therefore the outlets reporting her story are unreliable by their own made up standards because they did not fact check, they have incredibly ignored their own findings and used these stories as the source for Colman's real age, in her Wikipedia biography.

Let that sink in. On Wikipedia, right now, even after it has been the source of controversy, according to the Wikipedians ever trustworthy use of source, the actual source for Colman's correct age now, is Colman's words, reported without independent verification, in stories that contain other content from Colman that the Wikipedians claim is false and would fail independent verification. They even added two of the stories as references, presumably to make it seen more trustworthy, even though they have already realised the ultimate source of both is the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =880646100

You can't make this shit up.

This is Wikipedia. Stupid is their thing.


They are trying to live up to the "academic" vibe people stupidly think Wikipedia has*, when most of the editors are too dumb to be clerks in a under-visited comic book store that still sells baseball cards because the owner fell into the late-'80s red-hot collector's market and he still has a shit-ton of those '80s-'90s cards to move. Understanding journalism should be Rule One for a website that mostly exists now for BLPs and recent-event articles. The gormlessness would be frustrating, if I wasn't sitting on the sidelines watching the trains crash because I love a fiasco.


*Those people who have barely dug into what a mess Wikipedia is and don't seem to notice all the old tags at the top of certain articles.
Still "Globally Banned" on Wikipedia for the high crime of journalism.

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