Tech Shout!

American stand-up comedian and actor Sinbad was recently proclaimed as ‘dead’ on the renowned online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Sinbad, while relating the consequences of the entry, stated that rumors began circulating last weekend regarding the posting, who first got a call from his daughter. The gossip settled down, but a few days later the 50-year-old entertainer said phone calls, text messages and e-mails started pouring in by the hundreds.

”Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again,” the Los Angeles-based entertainer said.

Wikipedia, which describes itself as ”the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” leaves it to a vast user community to catch factual errors and other problems. Apparently, someone edited it to say Sinbad died of a heart attack.

However, it was perhaps too late by the time the error was discovered as email links of the page having wrong information, had been forwarded to hundreds of people.

On Friday, a note on Sinbad’s Wikipedia page read that the site has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with vandalism.

Wikipedia was created in 2001 as a Web research tool. It has more than 1.6 million articles, contributed by members of the public.

However, instead of lamenting or being upset about it, Sinbad took the entire incident in quite a chuckle, stating, ”It’s gonna be more commonplace as the Internet opens up more and more. It’s not that strange,” he said.

Sinbad, who is currently on the road doing his stand-up act, said he has not received an apology from Wikipedia.

This is not Wikipedia’s first tryst with such kind of publicity. A few days back there was a report on how Wikipedia moderator is not at all, what he claims to be. And some months back there was the case of the repeated mistaken interpretations of Enron’s former CEO Kenneth Lay’s death.