Wikipedia is the holy grail of griefing. Because people implicitly trust the information they get from the site without checking sources, there is plenty of opportunity for mayhem. First we need to distinguish griefing from vandalism. Going through wikipedia and making purposeless alterations that are obvious is the realm of 12 year old kids. That is mindless vandalism. What we describe here serves a specific purpose and is designed to not be obvious. This is art.
Wikipedia edits come in handy primarily in arguments. Take for example a debate with a friend or co-worker. You can easily say, let us look it up on wikipedia and resolve this. Of course when you do look up the article no one is going to look at the edit history. They will never know that the last edit to say “high fructose corn syrup has been linked in several studies to intestinal diseases” was made minutes ago from an IP corresponding to a computer a few cubes away.
There are two kinds of edits here. The first are short term edits. They are primarily intended to settle an argument. All wikipedia entries should be well written and spell checked. However, citations may not be necessary if the page being edited is not a prominent topic that is subject to frequent changes and vandalism. As long as the edit stands long enough for the target to see it, it is good enough. If the page in question is a controversial topic or a popular page, follow the guidelines for a long term edit so the edited content is allowed to stay long enough for the target to see.
Long term edits are far more elaborate than short term ones and are intended for general disinformation and mayhem. They have to be crafted in a way that will allow them to stand up to most cursory scrutiny. There are certain methods to making sure your edits stay. I have in the past made edits that were then further edited and rephrased by others while keeping my original (wrong) information intact. To maximize success use a few of the following pointers.
1. Spell and grammar check. As obvious as it is, many people stumble at this step.
2. Make the edit not obviously ridiculous. Use common sense here. If it sounds really odd to you, it probably does to someone else.
3. Appeal to likely editor bias. Going back to my earlier example, “high fructose corn syrup has been linked in several studies to intestinal diseases” , is not true. However, it does appeal to an existing bias against the substance. There are urban legends which can also be used in this manner. Someone reviewing your edit is likely to have heard the same thing elsewhere and figure it is true. This also increases the impact on the readers of wikipedia who believe it.
4. Appeal to the left. Many wikipedia editors are on the political left. Statements which appeal to their political bias are likely to stand up to scrutiny. In fact in some cases even if they find the statement to be false they will leave it in because it makes them feel good. A good example would be “white doves were seen flying over the capital on Obama’s inauguration day” no such thing happened but if you search for “white doves obama inauguration” in google you will see results.
5. Use citations. This is probably your best tool. Citations are rarely if ever checked. Reviewers will often leave the inserted information alone if there is a citation. Good citations are fake papers, wrong papers or a random link from a google search with keywords from your edit. In the Obama/dove example, using a random story about white doves released in DC on that day will back your edit.
6. Use pseudo science. Citing an edit with pseudo-science is a great way of supporting your disinformation. There are plenty of quacks on the internet you can use as a source.
7. Use logical fallacies. Most reviewers do not know that co-relation is not causality. This myth is perpetuated by the media. Use it to your advantage. Appeal to the fallacy of the mean; If A and C are two extremes, the truth must be at B. Appeal to sympathy. Appeal to fallacy of novelty; if something is new it is better e.g. “New Coke was thought to be healthier than Classic Coke”.
8. Use consensus. Consensus is a powerful tool. Consensus is not fact, consensus is not science and is used in the event of a lack of sufficient proof e.g. the consensus among astronomers was once that the sun orbited the earth, the consensus among mapmakers was that the world was flat etc. However, saying something is believed to be true by a consensus of <insert expert here> will make people believe it to be true. An excellent example is every Wikipedia article on global warming. I use global warming/climate change articles are a template for making edits to other scientific articles. I would recommend this because it is an example of the language that is allowed already.
9. Appeal to Multi-Culturalism. Another very powerful tool is to use references to other cultures and languages in English Wikipedia. If you are familiar with an Asian culture make stuff up and refer to generic Asian culture. Use zhongwen.com to look up translations for the subject and copy and paste the chinese character into the edit. This is incredibly effective. I would recommend referring to generic cultures with words like Asian, African, South American etc. This way if someone is familiar with only one country’s culture they may assume it belongs to another.
My protip:
Make a legitimate change from another account after you insert your lie into the article. Wikipedia editors rarely revert edits that are not the most recent, because they would have to manually insert all of the subsequent, legitimate edits.