As you may or may not know there’s trouble abrewin’ in Iran these days, in part because of shady election practices and a long history of oppression, but also due to a little something I like to call “the power of the Internet.” America, herself, (you know, the one who’s birthday party you attended last weekend), had a little brush with the power of the Internet over the past year or so. A New York Times journalist was kidnapped way back in…I dunno, let’s say November. But we only just heard about it a week or so ago due to an agreed-upon media blackout orchestrated to keep the hostages safe. It seems that while it was the proverbial piece o’ cake to keep a lid on it in the traditional media outlets, Wikipedia proved to be a different beast entirely. Not unlike the mythical dog with the three heads.
The NYT recently ran an utterly fascinating article about the ridiculously difficult, multifaceted effort that went into keeping news of the kidnapping off Wikipedia and the dogged effort of some random dude in Florida to get that information out there.
Oh, Wikipedia, is there anything you can’t do?
Tags: cool