I just read Constantin Basturea’s post about how the word ‘integrity’ is the most looked up word at Merriam-Webster’s. There are some 160 million references in Google (but these also index brokers, insurance companies and management firms etc)

But here’s a related topic: The fake Wikipedia post about the Kennedy assassination.

This isn’t the first time someone has played a Wikipedia prank. The BBC created a page on Wikipedia about a fictional star for a game that involved sms and email.

If you’re into podcasting, you’ll be shocked to hear that its so-called ‘podfather,’ Adam Curry, was recently in an controversy over editing a Wikipedia entry. He later apologized.

So what does this do for an open source encyclopedia? Let’s not get too upset with pranks and games that may discredit it. Like other sources of information that could be inaccurate at times, Wikipedia is just one source (albeit a damn good one) among hundreds we could turn to. How many times have we spotted inaccuracies and ‘plugs’ in newspapers and magazines? Yet, these are still around, in spite of the shoddy reporting and outdated facts that creep in. I will still use Wikipedia, in spite of the attacks on it by folks like Unencyclopedia.