14 DAY TRIAL // Beck won in the Album of the Year category at last night’s Grammy Awards, but some fans did not approve and took to the artist’s Wikipedia page to express their deep disappointment.
Shortly after the artist was announced as the winner of the category, his page was modified and the perpetrator left words that gave some clear clues on them being an avid supporter of Beyonce.
Beyonce should have won, fan believes
Since most Wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, as the online encyclopedia relies on the trust of the contributors, they had no problem adding on Beck’s space that he was a thief (Google Translate) that took the award from Beyonce, who was named the “Queen of the World.”
The Wikipedia entry featuring said dissatisfaction has been cleaned and the page is now back to its former state, containing accurate information. The only proof that the page has been tampered with is the date stamp for the latest modification.
Interestingly, Wikipedia administrators did not place any protection that would allow only trusted editors to make modifications.
When this type of incidents occur, measures are taken to prevent possible acts of vandalism in the future. There are multiple levels of protection available, each being marked with a padlock of a specific color; full protection is the highest level, with only admins having the right to edit or move locked content.
More evident defacements put page under lock
Currently, Beck’s page has the “good article” mark (a “plus” sign inside a circle), meaning that the information is of good quality (contains accurate details) and cannot be labeled as a featured article. This is no small distinction because Wikipedia has almost 22,000 good articles, out of more than 4.7 million.
The alterations on Beck’s page were not visible at a first glance, but in October 2014, the Wikipedia space of actress Jennifer Lawrence was vandalized more evidently as the perpetrators replaced her pictures with compromising ones that had been leaked online as a result of the infamous celeb hack.
Lawrence’s page stayed modified for a good 20 minutes and this earned it a semi-protection benefit until March 25, 2015. In the meantime, only auto-confirmed accounts can add or remove information.