Weekend Wiki

I don't know if I will be able to pull this off, but it's always nice to end the work week with a laugh, and Wikipedia, for all its strengths, offers so many. So I may try to find a Wiki of the Week.

My wife and I are great fans of "The Tudors," the occasional series on Showtime. We both know enough about the life and times of Henry VIII to know it's not entirely accurate. We enjoy it anyway, although Sam Neill's Wolsey is badly missed -- but at least "The Tudors" doesn't play with history so much as to make Wolsey a continuing character down through Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. ("Off with his head! Wait, sign him up for 16 more.")

At any rate, yesterday I decided to check out the page for "The Tudors," and found that this sentence was in the lede:

"The Tudors is a historical fiction television series created and entirely written by British screenwriter Michael Hirst. The series is loosely based upon the early reign of English monarch Henry VIII. It is marred by its misleading inaccuracies (see treatment below of "Princess Margaret"), and this deprives it of any authoritative status."

Later in the day the second sentence read:

"It is marred by its misleading inaccuracies (see treatment below of "Princess Margaret"), and the "departures from history" (dealt with below) which deprive it of any authoritative status, and make it at most, an entertaining well-acted fiction based largely upon real events."

But if you'd called up the page, oh, seven minutes later:

"It is marred by its misleading inaccuracies (see treatment below of "Princess Margaret"), and the "departures from history" (dealt with below) which deprive it of any authoritative status, and make it at most, an entertaining well-acted fiction based largely upon real events. It is devoid of real historical interest and is midleading as it is impossible for the general viewer to distinguish fact from fiction."

One minute later, an editor swoops in and changes it back to what it was the day before:

"The Tudors is a historical fiction television series created and entirely written by British screenwriter Michael Hirst. The series is closely based upon the early reign of English monarch Henry VIII." (end of paragraph).

But the anti-"Tudors" watch is lurking and within 10 minutes it has been changed to:

"The Tudors is a historical fiction television series created and entirely written by British screenwriter Michael Hirst. The series is loosely based upon the early reign of English monarch Henry VIII. It is marred by its inaccuracies (see treatment below of "Princess Margaret"), and the "departures from history" (dealt with below) which deprive it of any authoritative status, and make it at most, an entertaining albeit arguably well-acted fiction based largely upon real events. It is devoid of any real historical interest and is downright midleading as it does not give the general viewer assistance to distinguish fact from fiction. In this sense, it is an extraordinarily arrogant work from the point of view of the general viewer, as it alters facts and produces fiction, prserving accurate historical knowledge as the province of an elite and disseminating inaccuracy."

And three hours later, that's all gone again and it's back to the way it was two days ago. I visited the page with its second iteration of "Hollywood schlock!" and said, "Wow, that's the lede of the entry on 'The Tudors'?" I had no idea that a guerrilla battle was going on. Meanwhile, the article itself consists in about 2/3 part of a list of historical errors of "The Tudors," probably put there by the writer of "extraordinarily arrogant" and "province of an elite." That's still there. Perhaps it's useful, and perhaps it's totally made up.

"The Tudors" is not "Hill Street Blues." It's not epochal television. It's a fun costume drama. So I didn't expect the depth that would be devoted to a true cultural change, like, say, Pokemon. I mainly wanted to see if there was a reason Henry Czerny was not brought back. (How can you have Henry VIII without Norfolk?) I did not find that, but I did find all this. Maybe Henry Czerny was dropped from the cast and devotes his days to rewriting "The Tudors" site on Wikipedia as revenge.

So why, if, for example, if I want to check a fact on Desmond Llewellyn, the famous "Q" of James Bond films, and Wikipedia tells me that his name was Desmond W. Llewellyn and he was born Sept. 12, 1914, should I believe it? Maybe it says that today. Maybe tomorrow it will say "Desmond Llewellyn was the stage name of Rhys W. Llewellyn, born in Wales on May 1, 1912 (although many records give his birth date as Sept. 12, 1914). Llewellyn felt that international audiences would not know how to pronounce "Rhys," so he changed his first name to honor Nick Desmond, a local troubador." And maybe one of the Wikipedia editors will catch that and send someone a note for violating Wikipedia's quality standards. Or maybe they won't, for days or weeks. (How many times a day does someone look up Desmond Llewellyn? I'm sure there's a way to see. Does it really matter?) And someone somewhere will post a Web page repeating that, and Rhys Llewellyn will become a possible truth.

Well, watch "The Tudors" page, which for a few hours was even more interesting than "The Tudors." And now we have a new Wikipedia axiom. Check a fact against it, then come back four hours later and see if the fact's still there. If it is, it might be a fact.