Wikipedia Bandit Claims Times Krugman Dead; Krugman Alive, Still Has Nobel Prize
This morning in a front-page story by Catherine Rampell, The New York Times took a moment to gush about its Nobel prize-winning columnist, Paul Krugman.
After listing the Princeton professor and columnist's many laurels, Ms. Rampell wrote:
In recent years, in his column and a related blog on nytimes.com, nearly everything about the Bush administration — from health care policy to Iraq to 'general incompetence' — has been the object of his scorn.
Along the way, Mr. Krugman has come in for criticism himself from both economists and lay readers.
One of those critics has decided to kill Mr. Krugman—at least on Wikipedia. As of about 5:30 P.M. EST, Mr. Krugman's entry listed him as having died today. The entry has since been fixed, but a screen capture can be seen above.
Thankfully, Mr. Krugman posted on his Times-hosted blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, around the time he was reported deceased. So, it's more than likely he's doing fine and thinking about what to do with the $1.4 million he has been awarded.
You didn't need to take a screenshot: unless said vandal engaged in some pretty sophisticated database tampering, Wikipedia has either his/her user ID or IP address (or both), and it stores the complete history of every page (so another editor could easily "roll it back").
Wonder if it was Bill O'Reilly.
The incorrect death notice was added at 17:23 EDT Tuesday by the user 03md. There's a "diff" view with details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Krugman&diff=prev&oldid=2...
The false death notice was removed at 17:39 EDT Tuesday by the user Rootology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Krugman&diff=next&oldid=2...
The only thing I can't find in the (very public) article history is motive... 03md has made quite a few positive contributions, mostly regarding tennis and English football. This Krugman stuff is pretty inconsistent with his other contributions. Odd.
Look at the bright side--now you, too, get to use Mark Twain's deathless "greatly exaggerated" line.
I'm personally quite glad the rumor was exaggerated. I meant to congratulate you on your recent Prize the other day, but to tell the truth I haven't the faintest idea whether you deserve it or not. Why you're important to me is as an essayist, an explicator--a voice of calm and reason amid turbulence, an increasingly stalwart and principled resistor against the totalitarian dawn. Two of your books have been important to me, and neither of them had directly to do with economics. Keep living, yes, surely, but keep writing, Paul.