Last night, Stephen Colbert devoted his popular Colbert Report segment "The Wørd" to everyone's favorite site for questionable research, Wikipedia. The word for the day was "Wikiality", citing that, due to the site's format, any assertion can become fact if enough of the site's users agreed with it.

To prove his point, he encouraged viewers to edit entries about elephants with the absurd statement that the population of elephants in the world has tripled in the last six months. Indeed, such an edit -- as well as one Stephen said he'd make about him saying Oregon was "Idaho's Portugal" -- were found under an account named "Stephencolbert" around the time the show was taped. As a result, the Wikipedia admins have protected a bunch of elephant-related pages and blocked the "Stephencolbert" account until they can verify that it was actually Stephen (or his producers) making those edits (I guess if it's him, it's funny. If it's not, it's vandalism).

For those who are curious about the segment, the funny video is on YouTube. You can see it after the jump.

[via Bloglines]