#FactsWithoutWikipedia: Twitter Users Fill Wikipedia Blackout Void With Hilarious 'Facts' (TWEETS)

After Wikipedia shut down at midnight on Tuesday, Jan. 18, students everywhere began to panic about how they were going to do their homework.

The online encyclopedia's temporary closure is intended to signal their protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), both of which are being considered by congress as ways to curb online piracy and copyright infringement.

Instead of pages of information, visitors to Wikipedia are now greeted with a black-and-white page reads "Imagine a world without free knowledge" and a link to information on the two controversial bills.

Just when students everywhere were about to throw in the towel, the Twitterverse decided that, if they couldn't have actual facts, they would be forced to make up their own.

Below are a few choice tweets we found that were tagged with "#FactsWithoutWikipedia" that present some interesting and hilarious takes on the truth in a world without Wikipedia.

Teachers, history buffs, fact checkers: you've been warned.

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Meh.

Hilarious!

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Comments

[Sup Dooder]

04:19 PM on 01/19/2012

Cached wikipedia pages.

[maheshrsblr]

12:57 PM on 01/19/2012

Can you "consider" my tweets for your list:

"Macdonalds invented the Big Mac, the iMac, the Macbook Pro, the Macbook Air, Mac OSX. #factswithoutwikipedia"

"Global warming is the after effect of the Cold War. #factswithoutwikipedia"

More here: https://twitter.com/#!/MaheshRSBLR

kThxBye

[nishioka]

12:36 AM on 01/19/2012

> In Nebraska, you can vote twice per election if you hug each precinct worker. #FactsWithoutWikipedia

Joke's on you guys... because that's actually how we do run things here!

[ARTORICAL]

05:31 PM on 01/18/2012

"The Ballad of Billy the Kid" by Billy Joel is about the life and times of Bill Brasky #FactsWithoutWikipedia

[Tiana Lynn]

03:49 PM on 01/18/2012

What's stupid about this is that students who use Wikipedia for their homework, especially college/university students, could get a failing grade for misinformation. Since Wikipedia content is posted by users worldwide and constantly edited by said users there is no way to verify these "facts" as "truths". When I was in college/university our professors forbade us from using Wikipedia as a source for our papers. We had to use credible sources like books and hard copy encyclopedias or credible websites (*.edu, *.gov, etc, Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam Webster online etc.) If we sited Wikipedia sometimes (on a rare occasion) we'd be given the chance to rewrite the paper but for the most part we had to take either a failing grade on the paper or a loss of marks.

[jtthomas240]

05:25 PM on 01/18/2012

Encyclopedia Britannica is a secondary source, same as Wikipedia. Not to mention that the Britannica and Wikipedia were studied and found to be equally accurate - see link or the study in Nature.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

Plus, if you're a student who knows how to use Wikipedia, you don't use the Wikipedia address as your source. You link to the reference that supplied the information that you quoted, and you include that in your bibliography (because nearly every fact within Wikipedia is cited to its primary source). Can't say that you can do the same for Encyclopedia Britannica.

[Julienne C]

05:26 PM on 01/18/2012

of course there are concerns about people adding misinformation, but if you really looked into the culture, system, and size of the wikipedia editing community you'd see that the amount of seriously erroneous information is incredibly small. however, i don't know anyone who actually cites wikipedia as a source for papers, because even at its most accurate it is still a tertiary source. no teacher or professor i've had would consider an encyclopedia, print or otherwise, to be citation-worthy source. wikipedia (like other encyclopedias) is a good starting point for information about a topic. i use it all the time to get background on something i know nothing about, but not as a basis for formulating a thesis. also, if you look at the references on the entry, you can find good relevant primary or secondary sources.

usually though, i just use it to settle a stupid argument with my friends. it's very good for that.

[Michael Platania]

02:52 PM on 01/18/2012

I would hardly refer to some of these "facts" as hilarious.

[Samuels Ty]

03:51 PM on 01/18/2012

Come on have a sense of humor we all know the hoover dam was built by the pilgrims #FactsWithoutWikipedia