Tonight on Good News Week the comedian Amanda Keller discussed the vandalism of her Wikipedia page, describing the addition of such “facts” as:
- She went broke making ATMs for midgets.
- She worked on a short-running TV show “Shower Time With Uncle Bert”.
She said that the first time she found out about her supposed past was in an interview, when the presenter started asking questions about her TV show with Bert Newton. She then went on to mention that three of the midget ATMs were still in use in Melbourne.
A few minutes after the segment on Good News Week went to air, people were helpful enough to add the “facts” into the page, at least until the page was locked:
Revision history for the "Amanda Keller" page
Of the 140 edits of the page, 19 of them have been after the mention of Wikipedia vandalism on TV.
A quick inspection of the revision history shows “Shower Time With Uncle Bert” never appeared in the page before the mention on Good News Week, and the same goes for her ATMs for midget business. A Google search for “Shower Time With Uncle Bert” also turns up nothing:
Google search for "Shower Time for Uncle Bert"
I’ll have to add “invent fictitious Wikipedia vandalism” to the list of gags for my next TV appearance.
I don’t think she made it up, because if you search for “amanda keller” and “shower time” on the net, you’ll find a few OLD pages that mention this silly story …. and they all reference Wikipaedia as the source.
For example, here’s a post (on an Arabic forum … ?) that references the old wiki entry:
http://www.rss.raw2an.com/wikipedia/598935-amanda-keller.html
But it’s from 5 weeks ago!
Here’s another refence:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Amanda_Keller
Turns out you are correct: it was never made up, I just didn’t look through the history enough. The “shower time” and mini ATM edits were made in August 20, 2009 by a single editor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amanda_Keller&diff=309054519&oldid=302024692
They weren’t removed until August 12, 2010:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amanda_Keller&diff=378496263&oldid=377798245
That seems to be a long time for a bit of vandalism to hang around.
Of course, Amanada Keller would probably have already been booked for GNW by last August.
Knowing this, perhaps SHE vandalised her wiki page do that she could milk it for a few laughs when she finally appeared on the show!
Either way, I got a laugh out of it 🙂