2:17 PM - Iowa's Adventureland has a new website (with a twist). (posted by
Allen
)
I discovered today that the website for Iowa's Adventureland Park has been updated:
http://www.adventurelandpark.comIt's substantially more informative than their past site, and looks prettier too. They even go as far as listing ingrediants for the food they server (mashed potatoes: potato and milk product). Very cool.
When I went to see if they had updated the History section, I ended up on the About page:
http://www.adventurelandpark.com/about/At the top was a section about "Mascots and characters." As I read it, it immediately was very familiar. When I got to a quote, I realized the material there was from the Wikipedia entry on Adventureland -- and the section I was reading was text that I had added/created for the entry (mostly). One line did strike me as odd, about a "gorrilla with a girl in a cage" walkaround character. That did exist, but and ending like noted that the name of the gorilla was "Gilda" and that if you gave her a banana, she'd let the girl out of the cage (which would be an impossibility with how that costume worked).
Did the gorilla have a name, and was that banana reference just a joke? I went back to the wiki entry and noticed someone added that line in December 2007. The edit was done anonymously, and the IP address that did it has not done any other edits to Wikipedia, so now I believe it was most likely a prank. The page has been vandalized numerous times in the past, with some changes staying there for many months before someone noticed.
So there are two interesting things about this, to me:
First, the Adventureland Park entry at Wikipedia has been under scrutiny by the Wiki Police for awhile, because it fails to cite references for much of the information there. Only a small amount was actually found on the (old) official website or in a few online articles. Most of the information I found by meeting one of the owners in the park, getting his business card, and sending him questions. He's provided me with a wealth of updates and corrections, which I then was able to add to the wiki entry, sometimes quoting him directly as "a member of the PR team" or whatever. (Again, Wiki doesn't like this. They want solid references, though as I see, even without them, the page can stay up and grow for years with no issues.)
So, by having this "Mascots and characters" section now appear on the official Adventureland Park website, we can point to that page as a reference for the Wiki information. Thus, un-cited Wiki information can now cite an official source that is using the un-cited Wiki information. Full circle!
A recent article I heard about involved something similar happennig somewhere else in the world, with some public figure with too many names to remember (more than just a first, middle and last). Someone had pranked his wiki entry, adding an extra name, and the game was afoot as folks would prank then correct the page. At some point, a news reported used the page as a reference during a time when it was pranked, and thus the incorrect name appeared in print (or online?) in a legit article. Then, later, the wiki got edited back to the incorrect name, citing the article as a reference... Full circle!
I have contacted Adventureland to ask for clafirication on the Gorilla Edit of 2007. I'll let you know what I hear back . . .
:-)
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