When April Fool’s Jokes Infiltrate Wikipedia

By Patrick Biz
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

A lot of people are saying that Wikipedia is loaded with errors, and for good reason. Wikipedia contributors aren’t forced to verify their sources before posting anything, but if they were, it would greatly improve the quality of the online encyclopedia. Here’s a very good example of such a dumb error:

On March 31st, blogger Patrick Curl from There’s a Blog in my Soup, published an April Fool’s prank saying ProBlogger Darren Rowse is filling for bankruptcy. For those who don’t know Darren, he’s the man behind ProBlogger, one of the biggest blogs in the blog-and-make-money online niche. Darren has more than 45,000 RSS subscribers!

Guess what happened next? Someone who read the prank went to Wikipedia and updated Darren Rowse’s page, reporting the man is going bankrupt (see the very last line)! The information has no references, but still, it is still there as I am typing this post. If it’s gone by the time you read this, just check out the page history and look for the March 31st version @ 17:01.

Guys, it should be illegal to post April Fool’s jokes on March 31st ;-)