User talk:PMpuppet

This account was used by journalist Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC for the purposes of a radio piece in conjunction with Eddie Mair covering the alleged editing of Wikipedia by Grant Shapps, for the PM (BBC Radio 4) programme broadcast on 22 April 2015. There is nothign to see here, move along please…

Blocked
Hello. As you may be aware, this username raises too many questions to remain editing. Please read the username policy and choose another. When editing, please add reliable sources to support your edits. You can appeal this block using WP:APB. Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:44, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Good Evening PM
On the assumption that after running yesterday's experiment, you will be popping back to see what results, I would like to welcome PM to wikipedia. I noticed that the PM article is only start class, so if any of the journalists at the BBC have some useful information to add about the program, I am sure Wikipedia would welcome your input. I am sure such people must be familiar with wikipedia and how it works, so would in the ordinary way be well able to contribute usefully, and in this spirit of contributing to the general good which I am sure is exemplified by the BBC, would be pleased if their overall contribution improved the encyclopedia. I noticed from the page statistics that the article has only had 191 revisions since it was created in 2003, and 68 of them happened within the last 24 hours. I suspect these latter were all in response to yesterdays events, and only resulted in adding mention of them. I am sure there must be more which could be said about what is an important and well respected news program.

I loved the piece on PM, but I was confused about some of the claims broadcast on Radio4 about recent additions to the PM page being factually accurate, when it would appear they may not have been.

That aside, it is important that the wider world understand what wikipedia is. The method of all-comers creating pages is brilliant and it works, but everyone using the encyclopedia needs to be aware that from moment to moment, they may chance upon a page which has had deliberately false information inserted. This is not a book, which is a carefully checked finished article. Users always need to check an article's history in case something odd has happened, for example as here where the article was essentially unchanged for a year and then suddenly a burst of activity. People are not accustomed to questioning the validity of information they read, but they should be, and maybe wikipedia adds to all our knowledge if it encourages suspicion in peoples minds about all sources of information. You do wikipedia, and the world, a service by drawing to people's attention the risk they are being lied to by someone, in all the media. Sandpiper (talk) 08:36, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Admin note
There is a block message in the history of this page. I note that knowledge of the identity of the person behind this account was denied during the PM programme by the two presenters, several times implicitly but specifically around 30:30 on the iPlayer recording .. ''"someone called PMpuppet whose identity we don't..." "we don't know who they are, no."'' -- zzuuzz (talk) 07:38, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thats true, I heard the exchange and read the transcript. However, the news presentation as a whole gave the clear impression edits to the PM page had been made at their instigation for the purposes of testing what would happen. At one point, one presenter says he asked another to make such edits. "Earlier in the afternoon we asked you to go about editing the Wikipedia page that's about PM—this programme. What did you do, how did you do?" Sandpiper (talk) 08:48, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I felt the cringes from here. However, they were clear in their disassociation from this account. -- zzuuzz (talk) 08:58, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The second presenter said, "It's not at all clear that I did it". Sandpiper (talk) 12:14, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems from the above that you may not be British. As a card-carrying Brit, long-time listener to PM, frequent correspondent thereto, and whose voice has even been heard thereon, I can tell you: it was Rory. Guy (Help!) 18:02, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Highlighting the differences between what we know, what has been denied or affirmed, and what we can prove, was probably the point of this account. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:33, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It was satire: an exercise in demonstrating implausible deniability. Guy (Help!) 19:22, 23 April 2015 (UTC)