Wikipedia editors are wrong?

Yes, they're wrong. That particular mistake took a full 30 minutes before being detected and corrected. And that even though 326 people have the page on their watchlist, and who knows how many more see it as compulsively often as you do.

Though I suppose that's better than the Sarah Palin death hoax of February 2010. With almost 700 "watchers," it took 36 minutes for the much too premature report of the bear-hunting Russia-sighting ex-governor's death to be detected and corrected.

If it takes a half hour to correct mistakes about pop culture icons, how long do you think it takes to correct mistakes about people who really matter, like your town's mayor or sheriff?

Yes, someone edited the page.

I think the deal is that lots of the same people who hate Hannah Montana, High School Musical etc (I don't mind the latter so much) have directed that same loathing toward the next "omg scream!!!" girl fad.

But this isn't really about Justin Bieber, so I won't comment further on him. This is about Wikipedia's reliability (which, although it's not your fault, has been far too common a topic here).

I would like to point out that you could have edited it back and fixed it.

what the question?

stupidity is the most widespread thing on this earth, so yes, collaborative efforts of smart people can be destroyed by stupid people playing for their stupid fun.

instead of complaining here this way, edit the page and put the right year, you who know the right year, add the bio reference from e.g. an official site, and ask some "administrators" to stop the edit-war, if it was an edit-war rather than a silly joke or errors on errors; likely the page can be locked until the silly persons pushing the wrong date get tired of their silly joke.

wikipedia aims is not to be "primary source" and total reliability for it alone: for this reason a wikipedia article needs valuable external references; it's a requirement for a good wikipedia article. the rest is left to the great minds of the readers who know that wikipedia is not an oracle, but it is still a good starting point and contains a huge amount of well-done correct informations

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Yes, they're wrong. The problem with Wikipedia isn't "anyone can edit it," the problem is there is no accountability about who those anyones are.

If the anyone who edited Justin Bieber's birthdate is his publicist, or better yet, his mother, that would be very different than having some nameless, faceless idiot who probably has never been within a hundred miles of the little guy.

Heck, even someone with a restraining order against them from him would have more credibility than almost any Wikipedia editor.

On Wikipedia, you can even falsely accuse others of participating in assassinations, and no one will hold you accountable unless you chicken out and confess.

Something else to keep in mind: Wikipedia's policies prioritize procedure over commonsense.

Take for example the birthdate of Wikipedia's sole founder, Jimbo Wales. Was he born August 7, 1966, or August 8, 1966? One day is not as big a deal as four years, but still the incident illustrates wiki-stupidity quite powerfully. Jimbo himself said:

"According to my birth certificate, this article is wrong. If anyone has a reliable source for that bit of information, please produce it. Otherwise, I recommend it be removed."

To which Bramlet Abercrombie rightly responded:

"...if your own statement is not a reliable source, then neither is your birth certificate, since this is not verifiable either. We don't have your birth certificate available as a source, we have your statement about your birth certificate and we have your statement about your actual birth date. Assuming that people are an acceptable source for their own birth dates (unless there's any particular reason to doubt them) then we should take the date you said is your actual birthday..."

Doesn't that strike you as just plain ridiculous?

Wikipedia is all about revenge, retaliation, and perceived vindication. In this case, you have Justin Bieber, who's talented, successful, (probably) wealthy, and idolized by millions of young girls. He's also older than most Wikipedians, so while they can't change the fact that he's talented, successful, etc., they *can* change his birth year so that he appears to be closer in age to the average Wikipedia editor, if not actually younger. That helps to increase both their individual and collective self-esteem, which is the ultimate goal of all Wikipedia activity, and indeed, nearly all internet activity in general. That includes this answer I'm typing right now on Yahoo, which is making me feel just great!

The Wikipedia people *could* prevent this sort of thing using a feature called "flagged revisions," but they've chosen not to do that, because that might be seen as an admission by them that they were wrong (originally) to allow anyone to anonymously alter articles about anybody at any time. Being wrong has a negative effect on self-esteem.

This is why teachers don't allow you to use wikipedia as a source...

yeah, wikipedia is NOT the place to go to get facts.

Aren't there like 100 million websites on Justin you could go to for that info?