Famous Comic Sinbad Returns From The DeadBy Jerry Garner
The online encyclopedia Wikipedia comes under fire once more after an entry falsely reported the death of Actor-Comedian Sinbad. The report falsely stated that the comic passed away on the morning of March 14 due to heart failure, but the comic was found laughing about the instance the following day.
Wikipedia is the world’s leading online encyclopedia. The web site is edited by it’s users, not only allowing any user to contribute information on a topic, but relying on other users to correct errors found on the site. This process, which many say is flawed by design, has opened the door for a number of mistakes, misreported news and deliberate hoaxes, which Wikipedia refers to as vandalism.
Along with factual errors and deliberate hoaxes, Wikipedia recently became the subject of scrutiny as it was found that Wiki-insiders obtained their position with false credentials. This led to further speculation about just how credible Wikipedia is as a source of information, and the web site quickly went into damage control mode to assert itself as a legitimate online encyclopedia.
"The accuracy varies from article to article," said Mark Pelligrini of the Wikipedia press committee. "Some articles are highly accurate because people keep it up. For the computer science field, there is a high level of accuracy."
That damage control may have very well been for nothing, as Wikipedia is once again used as a platform to propel a hoax across the internet. This time the subject of the hoax was actor and comedian David Adkins, who is best known simply by the name Sinbad.
Sinbad, who has appeared on many television sit-coms, as well as in movies like “Houseguest” and “Jingle All The Way”, was falsely reported as being deceased. The Wikipedia page about the comedian reported that Sinbad had passed away Wednesday morning. According to Wikipedia, the 50 year old entertainer had suffered from a massive heart attack.
The news was picked up by an internet user who is a fan of Sinbad, who then forwarded the announcement to other fans of the comedian. A cascade of emails followed, which were accompanied by web site entries and links back to the Wikipedia article about the death. The internet was soon in a state of wide-spread mourning for the comedian, who was not only alive and well, but actually on a comedy tour in the United States.
Sinbad first learned about the Wikipedia rumor from his daughter, who encountered the false posting through an internet web site. Soon after, the comedian was bombarded with phone calls, emails and text messages by the hundreds. Sinbad, ever the comic, seems to be taking the incident in stride, and just laughed when he was asked if he was upset.
"It's gonna be more commonplace as the Internet opens up more and more. It's not that strange," the Los Angeles-based entertainer told the Associated Press in a phone interview.
Wikipedia is taking the issue more seriously. Shortly after news of the false report broke, the comedian’s page on Wikipedia was locked down to prevent further editing, and carried a message that editing was not possible to prevent further vandalism.
"We are currently looking into who made this edit, and have protected the page. We regret any confusion or distress this may have caused Sinbad and his fans everywhere,” said Sandra Ordonez, a spokeswoman for Wikipedia, in an interview with Reuters.
While Wikipedia prepares to deal with more negative publicity from the hoax, fans of the comedian Sinbad can at least breath a sigh of relief in knowing that the comic is ok. More than ok, Sinbad is actually laughing over the matter, giving him the last laugh over the unknown prankster’s Wikipedia hoax.
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