People are editing the Wikipedia article for the TV show Duster to say the protagonist's name is Duster

And "credible" news sources are repeating the lie that Duster is about a guy named Jim "Duster" Ellis.

It began on May 25th at 22:48 UST. An unregistered Wikipedia user edited the article for Duster (TV series) by adding 9 characters. These 9 characters have subsequently caused a mistruth to be unleashed on the internet.

The article went from saying:

[[Josh Holloway]] as Jim Ellis

to

[[Josh Holloway]] as Jim “Duster” Ellis

(The reason this counts as 9 characters is because the second space is a character, in terms of how Wikipedia counts it.)

Here’s the moment:

Where it all began…

After a few unrelated edits, the situation was nearly neutralized when a different unregistered user edited Jim “Duster” Ellis to once again read Jim Ellis.

That could’ve been the end of it. But this is the internet and you’re reading Edit History. So of course that wasn’t the end of it.

This is the moment when 152.117.117.32 (the unregistered editor who first listed Jim Ellis as being named “Duster”) jumped back in to make another 4 edits. 152.117.117.32 first added “Duster” back into Jim Ellis’s name. They then added in a CinemaBlend article as a source for “Duster” as Jim Ellis’s nickname.

The editor made a few more edits, focused simply on getting this cleaned up and looking the way they wanted, so that it ended up reading Josh Holloway as Jim "Duster" Ellis and linking out to a CinemaBlend article that said, yes, Josh Holloway plays a character named Jim “Duster” Ellis in Duster.

It’s possible no one would have noticed this, or that it would’ve lingered as a small edit war, had it not been for the following Reddit post:

On a whim I edited Josh Holloway's characters name on the Wikipedia page for the HBO Max series Duster to claim he was actually named Duster changing it from Jim Ellis to Jim "Duster" Ellis.

Never once in the show is he referred to as "Duster". It is not his name, it is the name of the show (the model of car he drives). It didn't stop multiple media websites including The Ringer & CinemaBlend (and a number of clickbait sites) when doing write-ups to refer to him by this completely false name.

The post goes on from there. You can read the whole thing here.

I have now reached out to the Redditor who made this post. They graciously responded and we are trying to find a time to connect. I’ll be writing more about this after we connect. I will also be reaching out to the writers for The Ringer and CinemaBlend who referred to Jim Ellis as Duster, to find out if they have watched the show and if they read the Wikipedia article. I have a lot of questions, really.

But we aren’t done yet. After the Reddit post went live—and received thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments—registered Wikipedia editor The ed17 jumped in to revert all of 152.117.117.32 ‘s edits, referencing the Reddit post in doing so. This editor also removed all links to the CinemaBlend article (which, yes, had originally been added by 152.117.117.32 ).

As The ed17 pointed out, the CinemaBlend article was “clearly not a good source, given that it used a hoax nickname from this very article.”

But we still aren’t done. While the same unregistered IP address made the first two edits claiming Jim Ellis’s nickname is “Duster”, a new unregistered account entered the scenario and made the exact same edit. Similar to the previous unregistered editor making “Duster” edits, this one has no history outside these edits.

While I wait to connect with the relevant parties here—the Redditor and the writers—I do want to share the impact that this has not just on Wikipedia, Reddit, The Ringer, and CinemaBlend, but now Google too.

When I looked up who is jim duster ellis on Google, I see a featured snippet lifting from the part of the Reddit post that quotes the now-corrected and debunked article from The Ringer:

As if this wasn’t enough, I’ve gotten multiple AI results for this in Google’s AI mode and AI overviews. Only one of these has identified that Jim Ellis’s name isn’t Duster—and that’s only because I specifically asked is duster about a guy named duster. Here’s one of those results:

Okay, so who cares?

What should we do with all this information?

On one hand, I think this is unbelievably funny. It’s inconsequential and harmless, while also essentially creating a honeypot to see who didn’t do their homework.

On the other hand, it might be Wikipedia vandalism, right? And aren’t I against that? Haven’t I written before about how annoying Wikipedia vandalism is? Am I making an exception just because I think this is funny? Yes, probably.

This also looks like it could become citogenesis, aka circular reporting, based on the CinemaBlend article.

And that’s all I have to say about Jim “Duster” Ellis for the time being.