Many people, both business owners and search marketers find the online encyclopedia to be a nuisance. Frequently Wikipedia will turn up at the top of a tremendous variety of search results, pushing other more relevant websites down the page. This is caused by the very large number of Wikipedia pages that have been created ( content ) and the very large number of regerrences to the Wiki from other websites ( inbound links ), the two things Google likes to see to rank a website high is search results.

The problem with Wikipedia is that anyone can edit the information found on the individual pages. If anyone can add to or remove what is believed to be facts that can be trusted by the nature of the page’s position in a search result, should such a resource really be there in the first place?

Recently a student took advantage of the editability of the Wiki.

An Irish student’s fake quote on the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia has been used in newspaper obituaries around the world, the Irish Times reported on Wednesday.

The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre, who died in March.

Shane Fitzgerald, 22, a final-year student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin, told the newspaper he placed the quote on the website as an experiment when doing research on globalisation.

He quoted Oscar-winning composer Jarre as saying, “One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life.

“When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear.”

The quote was posted on Wikipedia shortly after Jarre’s death and later appeared in obituaries in major British, Indian and Australian newspapers.

Mr Fitzgerald told the newspaper he picked Wikipedia because it was something a lot of journalists look at and it can be edited by anyone.

While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone’s death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre’s life, he said.

Mr Fitzgerald said he was shocked by the result of his experiment.

“I didn’t expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised about,” he said.

He said the hoax remained undiscovered for weeks until he emailed the newspapers that had been deceived to tell them that they had published an inaccurate quote.

The Irish Times said that despite some newspapers removing the quote from their websites or carrying a correction and the fact that it had been dropped by Wikipedia, it remained intact on dozens of blogs, websites and newspapers.

So the next time you think of using a Wikipedia page as a resource for anything you are researching online, just remember, someone may be making a fool of you.

Read the original story here.