When the worst of Wikipedia and Google join forces…

So that’s what the “ht” in HTML stands for. Got it.

what-html-stands-forIdea for screenshot via Reddit

For those not quite familiar with how something this can happen, here you go:

Wikipedia entries can be edited by anyone. However, there are editors patrolling to make sure that the information is as accurate as possible. Something tells me that someone added the word “cock” to this entry, but it was probably only live on the HTML page for a short period of time.

Google is constantly indexing and re-indexing pages on the web. The Wikipedia prankster must timed this just right so that the “cock” edit was still live on the page when Google re-indexed. It will not be changed until Google re-indexes the page, which is entirely dependent on how often they go back to Wikipedia pages. Until they do, undiscerning title/description scanners will now think that HTML is “cock Markup Language.”

Well done Wikipedia prankster. Well done.

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