back to article Wikipedia plumbs the filthy depths of plumbing

It always cheers us up when some wag gets right in there down at Wikipedia and sabotages the world's leading provider of balanced, objective and unfiddled info. It's thanks very much then to Mick McCarthy who's just spotted an nice addition to the encyclopedia's entry on plumbing: Wikipedia's entry on plumbing, or rather the …

COMMENTS

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  1. Tom
    Black Helicopters

    Brings to mind

    an old joke about McEnroe and a visit to a fertility clinic.

    On an entirely unrelated note, is there something a little goatse about this icon? No? Hmm.

  2. Aortic Aneurysm
    Thumb Up

    well...

    That just had me giggling away to myself, As half the office looked at me like I was losing my marbles.

    well played El Reg! Kudos to the finder (whom i Suspect was the one who edited it)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Wiki jokes now?

    Perfect, so I can go an edit any wikipedia page and providing it is funny enough, it'll appear here?

    What I'm trying to say is - viewing the revision history for that article....bet I can guess Mr. McCarthy's IP Address.....

  4. Mark Menzies
    Thumb Up

    Made me fall off my chair....

    ... quality.

    The Reg is mint. :P

  5. Dominic Kua
    Thumb Down

    It's not the first time I've seen things like that on Wikipedia

    They're often terrible at punctuation and homonyms. Shocking.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    It is just

    Someone trying to get "Roger's Profanisaurus" on to Wikipedia, so it can be accepted as fact by certain newspapers and courts of law.

    Personally, I need to see tw@dangle in there.

    Paris... Plumbing... Insert your own innuendo... <oh err>

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pulled

    It's been pulled, obviously, but the old version is here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plumbing&diff=prev&oldid=245218102

  8. Z
    Thumb Down

    Too late

    aaannndd some spoil sport has edited it out...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Plumbing

    They removed it from Wiki. Still in the history though.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Ah, so that's what's meant ...

    by the term "plumber's mate" ... ???

    Plumber's bits often tend to come in male and female versions. Perhaps there ought to be a warning about not leaving them in the same box overnight.

  11. Alan

    Students

    Don't they teach grammar at school any more - someone has managed to get all the way to Dundee University and doesn't know how to spell in and how to punctuate.

    Mind you it was done at 13:41, so either they had a bit too much to drink with their lunch, or they'd only just got up...

  12. Michael B.

    Slightly Depressing...

    ..is that the edit came from a University of Dundee IP address, according to a Geoip lookup.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Wiki censorship

    I once filled in an entry for Saint Vitas dance, (the dance displayed when you need a piss) The wiki 3rd riech soon had it removed, even though it's a fair enough description, so i'm sure it won't be long until this gem is also gastapo'd.

  14. Gav
    Thumb Down

    So El Reg is reporting graffiti now

    If you want to look I'm sure you'll find many gems on a par to this on the wall of your nearest pub. Perhaps you could report them too?

    Wikipedia gets 100s of edits like this every day. They get removed every day. What exactly is the point again?

  15. cphi
    Dead Vulture

    what the hell's this doing in the Reg?

    slow news day, huh?

  16. Jeremy

    Oh come on...

    Wikifiddling stories are often funny but this one was put there repeatedly by one pillock and each time stayed there for less than sixty seconds before being yanked. If it had been there for 4 days before anyone noticed, then it would have been funny but 1 minute? Pah...

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Poor effort at vandalism, though

    adding article text below the "External Resources" section? Why not add a whole "Vandals' Playground" section and bold the text up a bit, it wouldn't be any less subtle. Amateurs.

    Much more entertaining, IMHO, is creative vandalism such as editing articles in such a way that the first letter of each sentence spells out a profanity, a message destroying the precious NPV of the article or, most heinous of all, some criticism of Wikipedia. I'm still waiting for the Wikifiddlers to track down any of my efforts in this arena...

  18. Mark Broadhurst
    Thumb Down

    1 minute

    thats all it was up for look at the history.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    So now I know what to expect...

    ... from the book with the ISBN 0875099807.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Re Pulled by AC

    Pulled

    By Anonymous Coward Posted Tuesday 14th October 2008 15:37 GMT

    "It's been pulled, obviously, but the old version is here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plumbing&diff=prev&oldid=245218102"

    I think you must be getting confused with w@nking... See seperate Wiki entry

  21. Vincent
    Paris Hilton

    Wikifiddlers

    I remember looking at the Microsoft page on Wikipedia a few years ago. Someone had. Replaced the entire article with "MICROSOFT ARE EVIL!"

    I don't use Wikipedia much (if at all) now though, so I haven't seen many shenanigans as of late.

    Paris because I bet she calls in the plumbers.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    I see there is an external reference

    To Plumbing on The Register ;)

    PH - do we have to refer to her as a plumbers mate now :p

  23. Lol Whibley
    Thumb Up

    blinding

    but we need a name for this sport...

  24. censored
    Happy

    subtlety is more fun

    Stuff like that gets removed pretty quickly. Far more fun to be subtle. I added an unusual yet plausible hobby to a US Christian rock singer's entry that's still there two years later.

    Of course, since Wikipedia's arbitary rule is that if it's referenced in print, it must be true, simply reference "plumbing" to the printed Profanisaurus.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tut tut

    With Wikipedia you are supposed to cross-reference everything. It might have been more acceptable if he'd (I presume it was a "he") had cross referenced the appropriate words e.g.,

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunt

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Really clever...

    So, someone from the University of Dundee makes an edit at lunchtime, emails El Reg to brag about it and gets his name in an article about it a few hours later? Genius. I wonder if he'll post something inspirational at Have Your Say and send you a message about that too.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Plumbing is mint

    fuck, I might set up my own rival site to Wikipedia to allow such blatant stupidity.

    Thank you, Reg :-)

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Heh, He. Check out the edits

    First, they removed the offending text:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plumbing&diff=245254659&oldid=245254475

    THEN, they removed an offensive reference:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plumbing&diff=245264038&oldid=245255203

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Reminds me of...

    There was a young plumber from Leigh,

    Who was plumbing his girl by the sea.

    Said the girl, "Stop your plumbing",

    "There's somebody coming".

    Said the plumber, still plumbing, "It's me".

  30. rlow

    Removed from wikipedia?

    What a plumbing shame.

  31. Chris C

    Am I the only one

    Am I the only one who thinks such tripe is childish and immature? Seriously, if you think this kind of crap is funny, you need to get out of your mother's basement a little more. Is it any wonder the IT profession carries such a stigma? I used to think it was unwarranted. I now know that I'm just in the minority.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Is Mr. McCarthy from Leicester by any chance?

    ~ $ nslookup 86.13.33.209

    Server: croy-sm-1-l0.network.virginmedia.net

    Address: 194.168.4.100

    Name: cpc2-leic8-0-0-cust464.lei3.cable.ntl.com

    Address: 86.13.33.209

    ~ $

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    @ChrisC

    Of course it's childish and immature. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be funny :-)

    Paris - because surely her plumbing's in order....

  34. Joe

    Drop the dead donkey!

    I'm surprised you didn't report the wikifiddling event which happend a few weeks ago - unverified Wiki nonsense appeared in a daily national newspaper...

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2008/sep/23/mirror.digitalmedia

  35. MarkJ
    Paris Hilton

    Far better

    The wiki-cognoscenti (if such a thing were possible) edit articles on practices that might be termed NSFW by hyper-linking to articles where the suggested combination would be amusing. The one on 'gigolos' pointing to the evangelical preacher under 'See Also' for instance...

    Or creating empty categories or articles such as 'List of French Military Victories'.

    There's also the circular logic reference. Make an unsubstantiated claim. Reference a blog/feed etc that you can edit to point back at the article on Wikipedia. Job done.

    Paris, because according to a blog I'm about to reference she is a world expert on the written language of Easter Island.

  36. sauerkraut
    Thumb Up

    to all those who asked...

    why this thing was on el reg. simple: it was there to save my night, my sanity, my life.

    thank you, el reg, you did. God bless you!

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    My wikifiddle is almost 12 months old now

    Hehe, even though it is obvious bollocks, the wikifiddlers haven't found it yet.

    However, my attempts at English are somewhat better.

    Yabba Dabba Doo!

  38. Scott
    Thumb Up

    Humour

    I think everyone seems to of lost there humour bone around here? could be to do with the credit crunch maybe, I find it funny so keep up the good work El Reg! as i ain't going to go surfign that sh*t wiki looking for things like this, so having the funny ones pointed out i think your doing us people (still with a sense of humour) a service.

    Thumbs up El Reg. and go back to your DBs you boring peeps.

  39. Steve Kay

    The bigger question is...

    Will someone make the change at Conservapedia too?

  40. Gianni Straniero
    Happy

    Re: My wikifiddle is almost 12 months old now

    You are Ryan Coombes and I claim my ten pounds.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Oh cum cum now!

    Don't take life so seriously .............................. No one ever gets out alive.

  42. Miss B

    ooops

    http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Plumbing

    'you've missed a bit.....'

  43. Riccardo Spagni
    Joke

    Yet Another Humorous Wikipedia Article

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_of_the_road

    Did give me my morning lol, though.

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Oops

    Not any more ;)

  45. Mark Eccleston
    Paris Hilton

    Training?

    I'm curious as to what sort of training one would receive in Canada as shown in the external link, "Plumbing Training in Canada", in the pic.

    Paris cause well.....

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