Famous Wikipedians: 69.120.111.23

The edit in question.

At 12:01 AM on June 25, 2007, the page of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit was edited by an anonymous user, known by his IP address 69.120.111.23. A line was added about Benoit not attending a match due to the death of his wife, Nancy. The edit was quickly reverted by an admin because there was no corroborating source, and a fact like that would definitely need a citation.

At 2:30 PM, police in Fayetteville, Georgia, discovered the bodies of Benoit, his wife, and son. Benoit had murdered his family before committing suicide. The odd thing was, this was 14 hours after the Wikipedia edit about the death of Nancy.

News outlets picked up the story about the mysterious pre-discovery edit. Was the edit from Benoit? Or from someone who knew about the murders before the police did? The Wikimedia Foundation contacted authorities in Georgia, and they began an investigation into these edits. Separately, a WWE fan with the username LucharesuFan619 noticed that the IP address of the precognitive user came from Stamford, Connecticut, home of the WWE.

As speculation about this editor swirled, 69.120.111.23 posted again, this time to the talk page of a Wikinews article early on June 29. He apologized for the controversy he caused:

Hey everyone. I am here to talk about the wikipedia comment that was left by myself. I just want to say that it was an incredible coincidence. Last weekend, I had heard about Chris Benoit no showing Vengeance because of a family emergency, and I had heard rumors about why that was. I was reading rumors and speculation about this matter online, and one of them included that his wife may have passed away, and I did the wrong thing by posting it on wikipedia to spite there being no evidence. I posted my speculation on the situation at the time and I am deeply sorry about this, and I was just as shocked as everyone when I heard that this actually would happen in real life. It is one of those things that just turned into a huge coincidence.

You can read the full apology here.

This was not the end of the Benoit affair, however. Georgia police traced the IP address through Comcast and arrived at the home of a young man living in Stamford, CT (His identity can be found online, but Wikirama's not going to post it here, just because the guy has probably been through enough already). After seizing some of his computer equipment and interviewing the man, police determined he had no knowledge of the crime but was just responding to online rumors in WWE forums. In fact, there were other edits to Wikipedia about Nancy Benoit's death before the bodies were discovered, and much earlier postings on the WWE forums. 69.120.111.23 just happened to be the first to edit the page.

It's not often that vandalism and silly edits lead to real-life consequences. But with Wikipedia, a site that keeps track of every edit and is one of the most popular sites in the world, even a coincidental change like the Benoit one can earn worldwide attention. According to a according to a book on the murders, a detective confronted the young editor that the police knew about previous vandalism by him against Wikipedia pages. "You can turn yourself from a prank to a murder suspect," the detective warned. As the user contributions for 69.120.111.23 show, he has not posted again in six years. More than likely he changed his IP address, but he's not going to be making the same mistakes again.

Famous Wikipedian: Roger Ebert

Uploaded by Rebert himself

Although I can't find the exact column, the late film critic Roger Ebert discussed personally editing Wikipedia a number of times. It didn't take Wikipedians long to discover the username of Ebert: not an anonymous ten-digit IP address, but an account with an actual name, User:Rebert. From his user contributions page, we can tell Ebert made 22 edits over a period of five years, mostly related to himself, the film industry, or films he liked. Some of his edits included self-promotion, but very possibly he didn't know that was taboo. It's not like he was struggling to get noticed in the world of film critics
.
Ebert died this past April. He joined that solemn club of Deceased Wikipedians, and there's a banner at the top of his talk page saying it's preserved as a memorial. Someone even put a touching "See you at the movies" at the end of the banner.

Famous Wikipedian: Stephen Colbert

Pic by David Shankbone

Sometimes famous people edit Wikipedia. I'm guessing a fair amount of celebrities do this, bu probably not under their real name or any username, for that matter.

In July 2006, right before telling his viewers to edit the page on elephants to say that the population is tripling, Colbert edited an article on George Washington during the taping of his show. The edit, as seen here, is pretty funny, coming immediately after a long paragraph that contradicts its claim.

About a week after the posting, User:Stephencolbert was blocked indefinitely from editing, and the block stands to this day, seven years later. The notice on his talk page is pretty funny, saying the user was not blocked for his edit but instead for essentially impersonating Colbert. Furthermore, the notice states, the block would be lifted if only Comedy Central would confirm that account was that of Colbert himself. It has got to be the only personalized blocking notice on all of Wikipedia.

Colbert (or one of his staffers) never made another edit, though Colbert continues to rib Wikipedia on television.

User:Stephencolbert