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John Seigenthaler Sr. Criticises Wikipedia
EsonLinji writes "John Seigenthaler Sr, a former assistant to Robert Kennedy, has written a commentary in USA Today expressing outrage at a libelous biography that appeared on Wikipedia that suggested he was involved with the assasination of JFK and spent more than a decade in Russia. His commentary also takes aim at internet providers and the laws that allow them to act as common carriers without liability for the actions of their users."
no link to the article?
If you disagree with it, just edit it! No need to get all indignant.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
His commentary also takes aim at internet providers and the laws that allow them to act as common carriers without liability for the actions of their users
:)
Since when do political assassins give lessons about liabilities for one's actions?
According to Wikipedia he was involved in the assassination of a President and an Attorney General.
John.
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
so nobody was reading the allegedly false biography.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
This is only going to make things worse. Especially now that it was posted on Slashdot. The Wiki article appears to still be open, albeit I won't post a link to it.
From something I read somewhere:
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Road builders will from now on be sued if any crime is commited with help of a road.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Isn't it a bit ironic that Wikipedia (supposedly a reliable encyclopedia) has less advanced moderation than Slashdot (famously unreliable)? Perhaps it's time they got a bit more structure.
I do also notice that Wikipedia has a lot of entries for stuff that might not otherwise be considered important enough to be in an encyclopedia - open source software that is not yet out of beta, cars in video games etc.
John Seigenthaler Sr. is a whinny brat.
You'll never catch me! Mwhaha
that everything's connected.
If the ISPs were deemed to not be classed as common carriers, and liable for every action of their users, the restrictions on people signing up to ISPs would be unworkable (if the ISP was to remain viable).
Also, they could then be liable for actions of businesses against businesses.
This would set up being as ISP as a very dangerous business. So much so, that it would likely stifle network activity.
If that's stifled, then businesses don't communicate as effectively.
Nor do people.
Which would seriously limit the participation and movement of his discussion and debate forums mentioned in his proper biography.
So, by getting his own way, he'd eventually end up shooting himself in the foot..
How foresighted.
There's some irony for you.
"For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby".
But it's totally true. Is he really insisting that nobody has ever, in the past 40 years, briefly thought that he might be involved with the Kennedy assasinations? Of course someone must have thought he was once, briefly.
So, he is missing the point of a Wiki. If he is so upset, why does he not log on and edit the article? I am sure that his edits would be most welcome by a large percentage of the Wikipublic. Yo John Seigenthaler, become a part of the process. Don't bitch about it.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Unless a Slashdotter has seen John Seigenthaler Sr. wearing a tinfoil hat... Why would we care?
The ability for idiots to troll on Wikipedia is simply part of its nature, and (unless fundamentally changed) means that it can never be viewed as an objective, neutral, authoritative, comprehensive, or in any way lasting resource. The people to complain about are the users who so readily link to Wikipedia to settle every argument or copy-and-paste to pass every writing assignment. They give it a artificial air of credibility, and they take it into their lives without any sense of context.
There are probably plenty of blogs and tinfoil-lined web sites that do his reputation much worse than the entry in question, but he doesn't really need to worry about those because they are obscure. Wikipedia has become an intellectual crutch for millions of lazy visitors, and thus something of an institution. It smells authoritative and is treated that way by too many people. The only cure is for smart people who know better to cite better, direct information and to let Wikipedia play the role that its entire structure demands that it play: one big idealogical squabble-fest.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
But someone on the internet wrote that there wasn't any evidence for it - it must be true!
/.
I have sympathy for his position, but I'd rather see Wikipedia dealing with it as they have than the alternative TFA seems to be hinting at. Imagine you could be sued for a comment made on
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
His commentary also takes aim at internet providers and the laws that allow them to act as common carriers without liability for the actions of their users.
Tell me, why the hell should ISP's be responsible for the actions of their users? I don't see the telco getting visits from the FBI as soon as someone suspects them of providing service to "unwanted" elements.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
This seems like another example of someone who completely doesn't understand the internet. Sure, he had an erroneous (libelous?) biography published on Wikipedia. Fucking change it. That is the entire point of Wikipedia, as others have already pointed out. And Wikipedia IS a wonderful - yes, AND flawed - research tool. Nobody says cite Wikipedia in your dissertation and be done with it. It's a starting point, as any Encyclopedia should be, and it's made pretty clear that anyone CAN edit the damn thing. So you take it with a grain of salt, and corroborate your information elsewhere.
Instead, this guy does the going-over-peoples'-heads thing, pulls strings here and there to get things removed from websites, and considers going after an ISP because that evil intarnet needs to be controlled. It's like wanting to know who scrawled naughty messages about you on the blackboard before you walked into class in 3rd grade, when the fucking eraser is in front of your eyes and you're failing to use it.
I was hoping to see something redemptive about the article, but honestly, all I saw was whining. Unfortunately, whining of the dangerous kind, because it comes from a guy who has lots of strings to pull, and who is completely out of touch with the world he lives in. My $0.02.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
In other news, things don't always go the way you want them to. Adults and other folks with a grown-up attitude have learned this and accept it. Yet, in some countries with particularly easy lifestyles, growing up has become an option and some folks just get older without making the emotional transition.
Or, more simply stated, boo-fricken-hoo.
I can imagine that if Bellsouth didn't set the bar at something big, like a lawsuit, you'd have folks exercising their grudges through Bellsouth.
E.g. I get zerged in a game, so I plant some false info about me in the Wikipedia, then call up and claim that their customer put it there, etc. If I do it well, he's got to shop around for an ISP. That's when I raid his fortress.
Without something like a lawsuit, or requiring the complainer to pay Bellsouth to investigate, it seems they'll get buried in silly complaints.
I suspect this is why hosts that get takedown notices typically just torpedo the allegedly bad stuff: you've got a legal duty to take it down, and determining that it isn't bad is too much effort. So you just take it down and piss off your customer.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Guys, I thought anyone can edit the information at Wikipedia, right? Why doesn't this guy simply edit this stuff instead of going after the "carriers"? Heck, he could even provide an alternative view of what exactly happened since he seems to be at the center of knowledge. He appears not to know this is possible.
2 This opinion piece on USA Today, causing Wikipedia some bad press. If not for this policy, Mr. Siegenthaler could have just fixed the problems if he didn't ignore the policy like the people above and more, but instead he used it as an excuse to make us look bad. The longer we don't allow areas of expertise to fix problems like that, the more problems we'll have. 3 If a policy is WP:IARed all the time, there's no purpose in having it at all. 4 When you click on the edit button, right there at the bottom... If you don't want your writing to be edited and redistributed by others, do not submit it. With WP:AUTO, we'd have to change this to...
If you don't want your writing to be edited and redistributed by others except the person who this article is about if this article is about a person, do not submit it.karmafist 08:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC) from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MfD
My only question is: Why did this guy move to Russia?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Holding Wikipedia et al liable for what users post will certainly have a chilling effect on speech, not because citizens will be chilled, but because there won't be an effective medium for them to communicate with each other. The equivalent statement from the early days of the republic would be to hold the town responsible for slanderous speech because the citizens used the town square to hurl anonymous insults at each other.
Seigenthaler wants these sites to be publishers, liable for their users' content, but it's clear that Congress rejected that analogy in the Communications Decency Act. If Congress did one thing right with the CDA, it's recognizing that websites serve as the "town squares" of the online community, not its publishers.
I just want to use this as a warning to traditionally left-leaning slashdot: Politicians who don't know better are not differentiated by whether they are labeled liberal or conservative. So, when there's a conservative politician who bashes Wikipedia, don't get on your soap-box and spout off about how Bush is stifling free speech. Remember that whether they have an (R) or a (D) or even an (I), they are still politicians.
Also, from the article, John Seigenthaler is a founder of Vanderbilt University's The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center. Just because someone says they're for free speech doesn't mean they actually will follow that ideal, or that they really understand it. Then again, if I had some sort of reputation to protect, I wouldn't be very happy either if something like this happened to me.
What really concerns me, though, is comments like this, "...we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research -- but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them."
I suppose elite folks like him would rather free speech be limited to the elite. And who is he calling "volunteer vandals?" Anyone who contributes or is associated with Wikipedia? I certainly hope not.
OTOH, honestly, I can see his point. It has become more difficult to defend oneself against libelous statements. However, there are still legal avenues of redress, and freedom of speech is far too important to hold common carriers liable for the actions of a few. Holding them liable would stifle all speech on the Internet and goes against the very nature of the supposed ideals of this country.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
As others have pointed out, his analogy is totally wrong. Suing the telecommunications companies would be like suing (somehow) the airwaves or broadcast antennas, or television sets that received and transmitted the questioned material. Yes, oh dear, someone hurt my feelings. Lets go into our already burdened and ridiculously overused legal system and take care of it.
The strength of wikipedia lies in information about easily proved facts. Things get more complicated when we consider more controversial matters. Each reader has the responsibility for criticism when using sources like wikipedia. Errors always get published, in free or non-free encyclopedias. Eventually they will hit somebody. The difference is that in wikipedia you can correct other people's mistakes, whether they are intentional or not. In this particular case Seigenthaler is just making things worse by going public with the problem. After all, previous readers of the "fake" article should know that practically all available information about the Kennedy murders is just speculation. Now he's making the "fake" story known to many more people than it was.
What is interesting is that he is a founder of the First Amendment Center.
Apparently he feels that the First Amendment only applies to the Corporate press he was affiliated with. Personal press freedom don't count in his book. What he or his son are perfectly free to do with Wikipedia is to correct the incorrect portions of his biography or add a counterpoint to the disputed protions of it. Unfortunately that is not true with most of the Corporate press for the rest of us.
I just hope the emotions and reactions of a few don't destroy the huge benefits to the masses that offerings such as Wikipedia provide.
Powered by onion juice.
Was he ever actually thought to have been involved with the assassinations, even for a short while? I mean, it's not libel if it's true, right?
While I sympathise with his outrage, you would think that a man who takes such pride in founding the "Freedom Forum First Amendment Center" might be a little slower to try to bring his legal people to bear on this issue. Might the original article have been merely misinformed rather than malicious?
His right to publish a rebuttal in the op-ed section is safe, but then he (apparently) has money.
Freedom is slippery.
Using plain ol' text since 1968
I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable.
It goes on to talk about how he tried to contact bellsouth, and they wouldn't expose the user because there was no court order to. SO FUCKING WHAT! That's the way it should be. I'm glad every jackass who doesn't like me online can't contact my isp and find out who I am personally and my home address. That is, unless I do something illegal online and there is a court order. This isn't news. Shit has been going on like this for years. People need to realize the internet is not only beyond US borders, it is WAY beyond anyone's control.
So what's his solution? Government regulate the internet? That would be communist. John Seigenthaler is a dirty communist who hates america. I bet he is friends with Castro. He needs to go back to icy Moscow. You know what? There's nothing he can do about it because it's the internet. That's the price he pays for being a public figure. If you can't handle it then you never should have chosen to be a public figure. That's the great thing about the internet. My post will likely be outted for being untrue and the truth be spread. You can't control the world so EVERY person tells the truth about you all the time. All you can do is make the facts available and can be verified so the truth will prevail. Welcome to America, communist.
Our prime minister also got his wikipedia page, where it claimed he was:
...a convicted pedophile, and was doing jailtime from 1983 to '84
...the leader of the Norwegian Chimpanzee Ape-party
...cheating in this years parliamentary elections
;). In short, wikipedia got quite a bit of bullshit, and if you read something that seems outragous or sensationalist, it's probably not true. At least you should check with some reputable sources. Where I've found wikipedia to be extremely good is about information that is mundane, factual and not particularly interesting to forge.
I didn't find anything but a blog in English, but it was in all the mainstream press in Norwegian and you can see the original edit here. It also said he was doing a bad job as PM from 2000 to 2001, but I consider truth a defense to libel
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The Wikipedia article incorrectly stated that "he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby." So what ? Errors happen from time to time. This one has been fixed now. This doesn't justify an article on usatoday.com.
Taking existing laws such as libel, and trying to enforce them is a nightmare.
Laws vary from country to country. In this situation, you can try and coerce countries to abide to them in a method agreed by everyone as WIPO Copyright and the Geneva conventions do currently.
Of course like Copyright, and the Geneva conventions, people's interpretation of such agreements vary, as do their enforcement of these agreements.
So, he is missing the point of a Wiki. If he is so upset, why does he not log on and edit the article? I am sure that his edits would be most welcome by a large percentage of the Wikipublic. Yo John Seigenthaler, become a part of the process. Don't bitch about it.
The standard nitwit response, and an atitude that will ultimately harm free speech on the Internet. So you are suggesting that anyone who is being maliciously slandered on the web should get into a pissing match with his attacker? Wouldn't it be better to disallow anonymous edits so that contributions can be traced to the author? Serious Wikipedia contributors would have nothing to fear. Wikipedia obviously has a great deal of promise. But it suffers from the fact that many contributors are not authoritative sources.
an ill wind that blows no good
unlike the complexities of people who complain about missing features or bugs in open source (where the standard 1337 answer of "fix it yourself" requires a vast amount of underlying techinical knowledge), wikipedia is extremely userfriendly and accessable for anybody who finds an error to fix.
should wikipedia be held liable? no. should the ISP? no. is this worth doing a massive manhunt to track down the person who posted it? no.
fix the article, and go about your business. move along. move along.
As an aside, though - who wasn't involved in the Kennedy assassination?
Can you imagine what would happend if they print Wikipedia with this error in it and hand it out in third world countries?
It has been said before, and i will repeat it; Wikippedia needs to implement account-only editing to become a remotely credible information source! The people who argue against this say that "some people ar too coy to make an account just to edit, wich means we might miss out on their valuable contribution otherwise". Surely having a more controllable userbase is far more important than the need to accomadate people who are not willing to immediately commit. And I dont think that the risk of people being banned becuase someone else vandalised with that ip address, should cripple the whole damn endeavour. They will get over it, I would get over it; it wouldnt stop vandalism sure, because there ar ways around being banned, but a greater proportion of legit users would endeavour to get around a banned IP address than vandals.
I havent discussed all the issues of the debate. Comment and i will elaborate and/or change my opinion given a convincing argument against my (very rushed) one.
I have 3 words for you: ...Freedom of speech...
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
Of course, he's right. Wikipedia allows anyone to publish anything on its global platform, with no assurance that the post is in any way accurate and truthful.
Wikipedia's apologists here have already mounted the usual lame retort: If you don't like it, just edit it. (An uncanny parallel to to equally lame rant frequently heard coming from the mouths and pens of equally arrogant and equally naive open source software fanatics: If you don't like it, just edit the code.)
People who purport to be running an online encyclopedia have a responsibilty to the public to ensure that their publication is accurate and free of libel and slander before it is released. Arguing that anyone can edit Wikipedia is equivalent to arguing that conventional newspapers can publish lies, libel and slander because their readers will "fix" it by complaining to the editors.
Wikipedia is premised on a bad idea poorly implemented, Wikipedia publishes lies and inaccuracies. Wikipedia has earned our mistrust and contempt. It is time to pull the plug: boycott it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
In 1986, Middle Tennessee State University established the "John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies," honoring Seigenthaler's "lifelong commitment to free expression values". He founded the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University
And this guy is going ballistic because he can't find out who maligned him on Wikipedia, so he wants Wikipedia, and the ISP, to be accountable. He obviously doesn't care at the immense chilling effect this would have should he get his way. It seems freedom of expression is fine for him, but not anyone else. Anonymity is a valuable and important tool allowing free expression for those who may fear repercussions.
And I'm not giving credence to the lies posted about him, that they were online unchallenged for months means that no one looked at the page; until he went public maybe no one at all, so the damage to his reputation was slight. His desired remedies are massively disproportionate.
Mr. Seigenthaler has committed the terrible act of jumping from a perfectly ordinary valid grievance (Wikipedia has a questionable entry about him) to a completely bizarre and horribly dangerous generalization about information in general (people who provide connectivity should be liable for the actions of their customers).
Ok, Seigenthaler (can I call you Ziggy?), let's see you sue my ISP.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven."
My personal interpretation of the above quote is that "someone at some point suspected he was involved".
If someone says "man, that backslashdot guy was thought to be an idiot by some people". Sure this obvious and clear falsehood wreaks of deliberate libel, but I'm not going to run around having a hissy fit and sue unless someone were to say "that backslashdot guy, he's an idiot cause I saw him say something stupid".
What happened to the first amendment? Is anyone allowed to say?
When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people."For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia.
When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the pointlessness of mindless complaining. One day a bird pooped on me on my way home from school. I cried because I had poop on me, and protested to my mother to pay some attention to my plight and how nasty the bird was for pooping on me. Her recommendation was to stop crying and go wash off the poop.
Not knowing what you meant by "MSM", I Googled "define:MSM". Amid a lot of stuff involving gay sex and sulfur compounds, I found the definition that worked... taken from Wikipedia.
-- Old Man Kensey
A fair number of the /. missive are saying 'So log on Wikipedia and correct it.'
That's a ridiculous statement that doesn't make sense. Why should he be forced to go online and correct statements about himself? I thought slashdotters were generally against being forced to do things? DRM anyone?
Anyway, ignoring that point as it's silly, he's complaining on mainstream media about Wikipedia. You're whining on Slashdot. Who do you think the politicians will listen to? The danger is the techno-babble (us on here) are ignored, those with access to the mainstream media will have there message emblazoned in 30 foot letters of fire. Name the planet Adams fans.
The implications are huge if he gets listened to. ISP responsible for any wording? Sheesh. Oh and yes, IMO he's going way overboard on this and no I'm not writing coherently right now. Sorry.
It's true that obvious vandalism, pranks, etc. get reverted quickly. It's also true that controversial material, particularly on reasonably current topics (e.g Post-invasion Iraq get attention by editors who are actually checking facts and looking for sources.
But plausible or accidental misinformation, especially if well-written, can remain in Wikipedia unchallenged for very long periods of time. Spelling errors will be corrected, sentences rewritten, but facts don't get checked in any systematic way. Two that I personally ran across:
Example number 1: From July 2003 until October 2003 the article on Jack London said that he "attended the University of California" (true) where he was the editor of the university's literary journal (not true). When I asked the editor who inserted it for his source, he replied "it was the story that was spread around at Cal when I was going there. I don't know if it's true or not, but I had no reason to doubt it at the time that I wrote the info."
Example number 2: Wikipedia policy is act immediately to remove "copyvios"--any material copied from a source that does not explicit provide a free license or is not demonstrably in the public domain. Nevertheless, from June 2004 until a couple of days ago, most of the material in Wikipedia's article on Khalil Gibran was a direct copy from a Cornell University website. Nobody happened to notice it.
These are examples I happened to catch, so I'm proud of them. But there are also two embarrassing examples. There are at least two examples I know of misinformation I personally inserted into Wikipedia. One was carelessness. The other, far worse, was a case where I inserted casual personal "knowledge" that I believed to be true but didn't check--just like the other editor who thought Jack London had edited the Berkeley literary journal. Both went uncorrected for over a year.
The large number of facts that are corrected blinds Wikipedians to the existence of many that are not. Fact-checking is haphazard and catch-as-catch-can. It all works surprisingly well, but "working surprisingly well" is not the same as "working."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
A fair accounting of RFK, who I idolized, should probably include some details from Seymour Hersh's book re Camelot. Lotta very surprising things about RFK in there. *Probably* more legit than that other scurrilous info in the OP.
It's His life, on Wikipedia - he should be able to contact the moderators and also edit the documents to remove their horrible statements against him as being involved in the JFK hit.
I would think that as the actual topic of the page, he trumps anyone else for the editing and updating of the page!
This is a failure of Wikipedia customer service, accuracy and fair statements are the number one concern for Wikipedia.
False Data lowers the value of Wikipedia.
"Nobody says cite Wikipedia in your dissertation and be done with it."
Just for the record, ordinary standards of scholarship wouldn't allow citation of the Britannica, either.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Dang neighborhood kids get off my character and take your Wikipedia with you! (Shakes fist in air) Little whippersnappers running around all day with your Internets and peer-editing! What's the world come to?
So, by his reasoning re: common carriers, does that mean I can take the USPS to task the next time I receive, in the mail, one of those totally bogus adverts for profit-making time shares, or some such??
"John Seigenthaler Sr, a former assistant to Robert Kennedy" and "John Seigenthaler Sr, a former assassin to Robert Kennedy" are pretty close. I can see how someone could get confused and write incorrect statements. I was wondering, who wrote the false information in the first place, and where he got his information from. I usually get my information from wikipedia, so that article I wrote about John in history is prob off a bit.
But seriously, if Answers.com and Reference.com just cut and paste from Wikipedia, what is their excuse for existing?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Good one. :-D
More than mere navel gazing.
Wow, this comment has really opened my eyes.
:)
Of course, he's right. The Internet allows anyone to publish anything on its global platform, with no assurance that the post is in any way accurate and truthful.
The Internet's apologists here have already mounted the usual lame retort: If you don't like it, just put up your own, more accurate page. (An uncanny parallel to to equally lame rant frequently heard coming from the mouths and pens of equally arrogant and equally naive book fanatics: If you don't like it, just publish your own book.)
People who purport to be running an international information network have a responsibilty to the public to ensure that their publication is accurate and free of libel and slander before it is released. Arguing that anyone can publish on the Internet is equivalent to arguing that conventional newspapers can publish lies, libel and slander because their readers will "fix" it by complaining to the editors.
The Internet is premised on a bad idea poorly implemented, the Internet publishes lies and inaccuracies. The Internet has earned our mistrust and contempt. It is time to pull the plug: boycott it.
( And so I shall. You can assume that all further posts from this account come from an imposter.
Your opinion is noted and your intentions are known. Please form a line behind the RIAA, MPAA, Bill O'Reilly, and Orrin Hatch. Thank you.
When the problem is good work being replaced by trollery, advising people to do extra work to untroll the trolling is just ducking the issue. This is the issue facing Wikipedia and it needs to be taken by the horns and dealt with.
-- Old Man Kensey
On a realted topic has anyone ever heard or done wikipedia pulluting? I have several friends who claim to purposfuly introduce micro-lies into wikipedia, I'm often sent links to stories that have twists they claim to have inserted. It's always little things such as, when Political Person X goes to Europe they always bring a 32 pack of Snickers because they think European candy is horrible. I've never gone back to check and see if it was removed or not, so I don't know if it's getting cleaned as fast as it's entered. Has anyone here ever done it for kicks, or know of anyone who has?
A wiki runs somewhere. Someone comes along and enters something illegal: how to be a sniper, slander or liber about a certain person, excerpts from a book against copyright, you name it.
Someone else comes along, see this and is outraged. They want to do something. What can they do?
"Change it yourself" is like saying "if skinheads painted Nazi slogans on your house wall, just repaint it". Is that really OK and is all that should be done? Nobody should be pursued for this?
Are we saying that a wiki is somehow above the laws and should be exonerated by default of any consequences, along with its administrators, host and everybody, except perhaps that malicious contributor who can't be tracked down anyway?
Personally, I'm glad the dude raised his voice about this. The terms of use and so called "licenses" that wiki's generally use are simple jokes. You can't put up a system where anybody can enter anything they want, in high exposure, and expect to get away with it when something illegal is inserted. Why? Because a wiki is not a discussion. It's supposed to be reference.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
...and it's not just the errors. It's the ipoor writing that gets me. I've read high-school papers better than most of the crap on Wikipedia.
However, I still think Seigenthaler is full of shit. First, it's not libel because no one would ever believe the asinine allegation. Second, he could have changed it any time he wanted.
I personally think this is just a well orchestrated attack on protecting common carriers from lawsuits. I'd bet anything trial attorneys are behind this fiasco and Seigenthaler is just the front.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Internet forums are not like newspapers of old. There isn't an editor or a publisher who stands behind data being presented. It's raw vox populi in all its glory and ugliness. It's natural that falsehood and libel make their way into something like the Wikipedia, because any spiteful and unscrupulous person can, for some time, carry out a program of defamation.
...we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research -- but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them.
Naturally, anything of this nature that you read of the Wikipedia must be treated with extreme suspicion. That's a good habit to get into anyway, because it turns out the conventional media isn't necessarily better. They can do character assasination under the guise of innuendo and formulae carefully crafted to keep them out of legal trouble. Just think of the signature Fox technique for this. If they wanted out to get Mr. Seigenthaler, they'd simply keep saying as they go to commercial break, "Coming up, was John Seigenthaler part of a Kennedy assasination conspiracy?" They don't have to do anything; maybe they'll have a lame and completely unmemorable two minute discussion. The important thing is that they've drummed the following the following phrase into the public consciousness "Kennedy assasniation conspiracy", then associated his name with it.
I think an important thing to learn from the Wikipedia is the degree to which people should or should not be trusted. Clearly this incident shows how one should approach information in the Wikipedia with caution. However, to pick one or two incidents and use it as a representative of the whole is foolish indeed. It misses more than 50% of the data. Consider the following statement by Mr. Seigenthaler:
He says this as if it is other than it should be.
The same kind of arguments about the depredations of wicked individuals have been made in favor of censorship of the press and in favor of aristocratic rule. If people are allowed to print what they want, some of them will print libel and heresy. If people are allowed to rule, then the vote low minded persons will count as much as virtuous people. The problem with this train of thought is that it misses so much. It misses the shortcomings of the alternatives: the possibility that it might be the censors who have a libelous agenda, or the possibility that the aristocrats are the bigoted and low minded persons.
It also dismisses out of hand that virtue and decency may be more common in the general population than proponents of elitism will have you believe.
I am by nature a cynic about human nature, but if you need a counter example showing the preponderance of decency in the general population, I can think of no greater one than the Wikipedia. We all know the spiteful have less to do and thus more time to pursue their work than the fair minded. It takes ten, possibly a hundred or more decent people to balance one nasty one with an agenda. Given this, you would expect the Wikipedia, given its rules of governance, to be an utter cesspool. But it's not. Quite the contrary, it is nearly always very balanced, at least in articles with many people are watching. Clearly in the case of obscure figures such as Seigenthaler, there are few people watching. About the only thing it is safe to take from such an article is that he was somehow associated with the Kennedys.
When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people."
Then how much worse to spread an evil opinion about people in general?
The lesson of democracy and free speech is that there is always somebody somewhere who is breaking open the pillow and spreading the feathers around, and it's futile to try prevent it. But is possible to get them all, or mostly back. You just need lots of help.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"iPoor" Damn, now Apple is going to sue me for trademark infringement!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Is the phone company held liable if you threaten someone's life over the phone?
Does the company that actually printed a scandalous, tell-all book (not the publisher) have liability for its contents?
Let's face it, despite their best efforts, the anti-gun forces in this country are having a heck of a time getting lawsuits to stick trying to hold gun manufacturers liable for gun deaths. Should they be?
There comes a point where the system cannot be held responsible for the actions of the individual. If I decide to run over someone I hate with my car, should somebody be suing Saturn?
Wikipedia is a free medium and as such, while much of the content is probably clear and accurate, occassionally it is not. Mind you, there's no real way to tell from a Wikipedia article which case applies. Still, like they taught us in high school, when writing a report you need more than one source. Anyone who relies solely on information found on the Internet is just asking for trouble.
On the one hand, I sympathize with Mr. Seigenthaler, because if someone were using the Internet to spread bald-faced lies about me, I'd be pretty pissed. Mind you, I don't know if these are lies, as I'm taking his word for it, but that's where further research would come in. On the other hand, it's not like he has no recourse as several people have already pointed out. If he's got a web browser and some time he could edit the article and save some money on legal fees in the process.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Why is any other single source to be considered more neutral than Wikipedia? Does going to journalism school truly make one neutral? I don't get why some people think that the only trustable or neutral source is a professional journalist working for a large corporation. I'm not a professional chef but I can grill a damn good tasting steak.
But JFK and most of its administration made a pile of crimes against the humanity, from south america disruption of democratic systems, forcing military (yet US-bound) systems to take over, to serious and unecessary conflicts with the soviets, sometimes approaching the 3rd world war (ex. pigs bay). Several Vietnam atrocities are also his fault.
I know, I know. A politician slamming the hallowed Wikipedia - that's bound to get the slashdot crowd riled up, but is it really that clear cut?
;) )
Sure this guy can, as so many of you have said, go and edit the entry. Why the hell should he have to? It's pretty unfair to say to someone 'there's this website with millions of readers - that journalists writing about you may well use as a reference - which you need to go and check every day to make sure it doesn't say anything untrue and libelous or just plain hurtful about you.' Which is, basically, Wikipedia's proposition to any famous (and possibly not famous) person.
The town square analogy doesn't help because a) you have a much more limited audience in a town square, and b) it a real town square requires actual physical presence, which implies taking some responsibility for your words; Wikipedia allows anonymous posting which means people can - and pretty much do - say anything they want without fear of being held to account. (And, no the irony of an AC posting this hasn't escaped me
And claiming non-authoritative status doesn't really protect you either. You try going on Letterman and saying 'G.W. Bush f**ks his mother,' and then making your defence in court that you're not authoritative.
Now, none of this should be taken as a criticism of the Wikipedia concept; I think it's great - and important - and I use it almost every day. I'd hate to see something like this lead to legislation that limited it in any way, or even just led to a chilling effect on legitimate posters.
On the other hand, I do think it has an accountability problem that isn't easily solved. I know I don't have the answers, but I also know that I'm fed up with fixing vandalism to the pages I'm interested in, and that there must be some legal and/or moral implications to giving any any chip-on-his shoulder malcontent a license to anonymously say whatever he wants about whoever he wants to millions of people through a channel percieved as authoritative.
Reliable source of information or complete freedome from consewuences. Choose one.
Until he wrote a USA Today article giving it life. Just edit it quietly.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
If you want a perfect ideal then instead of whining 'boycott it', propose something that would be perfect in all cases. Lies/inaccuracies? I'm sure there's quite a few places in the world where even Britanica is looked at as Western propaganda. Poor idea? I visit Wikipedia pretty much everyday to see what interesting, accurate-enough piece of entertainment/insight is highlighted at the moment. And when I say accurate-enough, I'm saying that for the amount of good information within Wikipedia it far outweighs the relatively very small amount of datums that are contested.
Shh.
Would preventing anonymous contributions solve the problem? What is the benefit of allowing anonymity in this particular context? (just asking, don't flame :-) )
In the US, ISPs are not Common Carriers. (Yes, I know.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
For some who is a partisan of the 1st amendment he sure seems to dislike free speech...
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
is a failure to communicate. Seriously, we have a many pushing 80 who has been in the media for 56 years. I know many people who are scared to death of the internet that are his age and he obviously has some issue with the new media that is the latest thing to come along and challenge the supremacy that newspapers had in reporting news for decades.
The fact is, his attack is aimed at the entire internet, from blogs to Wikipedia. It is sort of ironic when you read his wikipedia entry and then see what he has said today. From his wikipedia entry:
In 1986, Middle Tennessee State University established the "John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies," honoring Seigenthaler's "lifelong commitment to free expression values". He founded the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in 1991.
Such a wonderful free speech advocate that he screams foul to a degree where he calls for the head of the internet. The greatest thing about news and blogs on the internet is the anonymity it affords people to express themselves without the fear for any retaliation. You would think that an advocate of free speech would realize this and embrace such a wonderful technology.
As for the posts on wikipedia about his ties to the assassination, if they were written in a truly speculative fashion then he really cannot say much since someone would be expressing an opinion in the form of one of those crazy conspiracy theories. I have to break it to him, but Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin still have to deal with crap from the conspiracy nuts over their moon landing. I mean Aldrin decked a man over it.
As for holding providers liable, does that mean I should hold the Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, or any other major media outlet responsible wholly responsible for the content of their writers? I doubt he would make a resounding yes to that statement considering the problems the media has had lately with its image. The Gallup Poll on Honest and Ethics by Profession actually lower in 2004 for the journalists to below 40% and a 2005 survey in Australia has journalists at 11%. (If anyone has survey results for a US survey in '05 please let me know.)
I hate to break it to the man, but the world is changing and the protection afforded us on the internet might turn out to be the only way to avoid repercusions for what we say, especially at the pace the great US of A is going. Not to mention how great it already is for people who don't have the luxury of free speech that we are suppose to enjoy.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
"Ah, Florida! Just think, somewhere in this state, Jeb Bush is eating a live puppy." -Stewie Griffin
Auron may be different, Cally, but on Earth it is considered ill-mannered to kill your friends while committing suicide.
So, to reply en masse...
I'm very happy to see the standard knee-jerk "change the article!" defense of wikipedia in full effect. The problem with that is that you're not allowed to change articles about yourself, so even this ridiculous charge is meritless. I also think there's a fundamental problem with the way people are looking at this. For one second, put aside your self-righteous indignation and think about the position the guy's in. You worked with a guy, were his friend, and knew his brother. Next, remember what effect these assasinations had on the country at large, not even just those who knew the brothers. We had people suing for infliction of extreme emotional distress just because they SAW President Kennedy getting shot. Now, imagine someone claiming that you were involved in the death of your friend and his brother, AND that you were in collusion with a foreign power, and sticking it on a website, where everyone could see it. Sure, it might not be libel, but it's pretty close, and warrants better discussion than "he should just change the article! The magic of wiki!"
Next, the utility of wikipedia. I'm sorry, I don't see it. First of all, there's a huge credibility problem, because they don't take responsibility for anything. This isn't something new, every other month we see a collection of things gone horribly wrong, and every time we get a push to fix the symptoms, but never the cause. Sure, the new certification procedures will have some bite, but not nearly enough. They don't have enough staff, they don't have researchers to double-check things, so anything that looks plausible will likely get through. Witness the article by John Dean a couple of months ago, which claimed that he ghost-wrote his books. Not only did he not, as he explained, the article got the number of book he had written incorrect. How are subtle but very important problems like that going to be addressed, when they're being reviewed by someone with too much on his plate and no solid expertise on the subject? If it can happen to someone as important as John Dean, why can't it happen to really anyone?
I've also seen a lot of comparisons to the so-called "Main-stream Media." While I'll agree that the media has a lot of problems, this comparison is completely bogus. Firstly, the media actually has accountability, in the form of a large group of people who get very angry when things do go wrong. Witness Rathergate, Jason Blair, et al. Secondly, in most cases (high-profile reporters are often exceptions), reporters are under pressure to get things right to both keep the editor off their backs (yes, editors do fact-check!) and to not get fired, which is what happens to (most) reporters when they go off the reservation. Perfect? No. But a lot better than the monkeys-at-typewriters approach so in vogue with the internet nowadays. As a friend said: The best is the enemy of the better.
Finally, I see a lot of stuff about how wikipedia is good for quick-fire information, that the things are usually verifiable, and that it covers topic in a good basic way. My question to that is: How does that vary from an internet search? If you're going back to other sources to verify, why not just start at the sources? If they're being cited in a basic article about the subject, they most likely are treating the subject in the same basic way the wiki article is. Plus, if you search the internet, you get ALL the information, not just cherry-picked bits. If we're purporting that you should decide on the wiki based on the validity of the sources, you should be in a similar position to weed out the chaff. So in the end you get more information, the same level of error-checking, and no filter.
So, why is this the great golden god of the internet? It's not particularly useful for its stated purpose, it's shown to often be inaccurate, and any criticism of it leads to a large number of people ignoring the problem and simply chanting "change the article." If we want a collaborative information project, this is just about the exact wron
Maybe he should rant about how paper manufacturers should be liable for what people print on their paper?
I hate to say this, but as a 'mature' person myself, I've got to wonder if his age isn't a factor. It seems to be difficult for many older people to understand the fluidity and immediacy of the Web. They're used to more labor- and capital-intensive means of disseminating information. In the past, it took a newspaper, TV station, or other media enterprise to spread a story - true or false - to the world. The Web has given everyone that power. I think those who grew up with the older systems still have a mindset that says 'someone is in charge of this', when in fact, no one is. There's no way to moderate and fact-check every word that goes onto the Web.
I have at least a dozen forums I go to regulary and post my prattle without anyone policing it. The only one responsible for that content is me. Could I be sued for libel? Of course. Can the sites I post to? I hope not. Because if they can, they'll all shut down tomorrow. Nobody is going to put his business, his reputation, and his wallet behind the accuracy of what I post. And they shouldn't have to.
To me, the Web is no more responsible for what's posted on it than the phone company was for what was posted on their telephone poles in the previous generation. Or for what was said over their lines, for that matter. And that's the way it should be.
Remember, Mr. Seigenthaler, one side effect of being a staunch proponent of free speech is that some of it is bound to be directed at you.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
At the risk of wandering offtopic, I've got to simply voice my appreciation for the services that Wikipedia provides. The entire Wikimedia suite amazes me, the fact that so many people can collaborate with very few issues to build something so helpful is a wonderful thing.
Probably a lesser known fact is that all database dumps of wikipedia are available for download in XML and other formats. This makes the data even more useful. Personally I have been using a massive dump of data from Wikimedia in some of my data mining projects, and i'm sure many others have found good use for it.
Although todays article about wikipedia is quite obviously (to all of us) a silly argument, we must keep in mind that not everyone shares our community-based-information outlook, nor our basic understanding of the technology.
That said, someone needs to just tell this guy about the 'Edit' button available on every page!
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Don't know about the US, but in UK law repeating a libel is still a libel, even if you are doing so to state that it is false (former Prime Minister John Major won a libel case on exactly this basis). The idea of taking a libel action is to *stop things being said*, not to have them repeatedly denied.
Groundskeeper Willie: I warned ya about the colored chalk, didnt I warn ya? That chalk was forged by Lucifer himself!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I was going to point out the role that anonymous pamphleteers played in kindling the American Revolutionary War, which I think we're safe in assuming John Seigenthaler Sr still recognizes as a good thing. But in researching references, I found someone who had already articulated this argument better than I could hope to:
(Full article by Ken Anderson, Editor of the Magic City Morning Star, is here; it points out how many of the founding fathers 'posted anonymously')
It's too bad John Seigenthaler Sr. has his feelings hurt by what is an obviously untrue story about him. I'm a little suprised that someone with what appears to be both polititcs and journalism in his background is so easily perturbed such ludicrous accusations; both professions generally involve thicker skins than that. he's welcome to his opinion about the wisdom of allowing anonymity - but fortunately (in my opinion!), reality differs.
Maybe we should be looking into the allegations he is so upset about a little more carefully.....
"Just don't ask me where I was when Kennedy was shot!" - the Comedian
The italicised quote in the parent article was a quote of what was appeared in wikipedia for 132 days some time ago. I added the bold part for emphasis. Also, the parent posting should not be taken seriously or used as a basis of any factual or speculative information of any kind whatsoever.
Furthermore, my "personal interpretation" only refers to how I would interpret what that particular quote is trying to say. It doesn't mean anyone believes, or should believe, the quote.
I like John Seigenthaler.
Oh yeah, I have no money so do not sue me.
From TFA - "populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them." Sounds like the mainstream press is also in on it.
When I was doing my degree the rules were quite explicit, primary sources only, so no Wikipaedia (had it existed at the time) or Britannica. The parent was pointing out that quoting Wiki won't get you your degree, not claiming that it isn't citation.
Not quite true. When I did network administration, we had "dynamic ip" (or DHCP for people who know what they're talking about), and I could still track down, to the physical hardware, any IP address. There are two key things in play here that any ISP that intends to cover its ass(ets) should be maintaining:
With these two things, a decent ISP should be able to, with little effort, examine their logs if a legal issue arises, and say where the physical hardware was located (down to the neighborhood, roughly), and determine if the same MAC address is still on their network somewhere. It's not pinpoint accuracy, but it's better than the usual "We haven't got a bloody clue, and we're not liable" story that most ISPs in this situation have given.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
The ability for idiots to troll on Wikipedia is simply part of its nature, and (unless fundamentally changed) means that it can never be viewed as an objective, neutral, authoritative, comprehensive, or in any way lasting resource.
This is a natural conclusion, but it's simply wrong. This is like arguing that the U.S. Capitol is not a lasting resource because parts of the roof and many of the interior walls have had to be replaced over the past fifty years. Or that the writings of Plato are not a lasting resource because their original media crumbled to dust centuries ago. Or that the Bible is not a lasting resource because it has been reorganized, rewritten, retranslated, and augmented over the course of dozens of centuries.
Knowledge does not last unless you maintain it. Erosion tries to break it; idiots try to deface it, censor it, ridicule it, or drown it out. And, of course, knowledge eventually goes out of date -- some of the attacks on it eventually prove to be legitimate, and the knowledge evolves to suit. Honest scholars must do work, hard work, throughout their lives, in order to preserve the old knowledge and keep it up to date. This has always been true; Wikipedia just makes the process much more evident by speeding it up several hundred times.
Wikipedia is accurate to the extent that people maintain it. The articles that people watch are very accurate indeed. The entries that nobody reads or cares about -- including Siegenthaler's biography -- are not. If Siegenthaler wants an accurate biography of himself to appear on Wikipedia, he should write one and put it up, or have someone else do so. If he wants to be sure that trolls don't deface it, he has to monitor all the changes and revert it to a previous version whenever it gets defaced. (Which will probably be a lot more often, now that he's turned himself into a poster boy for the thin-skinned.)
Does he think that this work should be someone else's responsibility? Too bad. TANSTAAFL. If you care about it, do the work. If you don't care, don't expect me to care, either.
The problem, which you identify, is that people think that the text which appears on Wikipedia at any given moment is authoritative. But that's only a symptom of a bigger problem: there is no authoritative source of information. A "squabble-fest" is all we have. The good thing about Wikipedia is that intellectual squabbles take place online, in front of your eyes, in real time -- instead of being spread out across dozens of books, articles, and isolated websites, published over years or even centuries, each of which is a hodgepodge of accurate and inaccurate information.
"I'd have to PROVE that somebody is guilty of defamation before I can make his ISP give me his name. WAAAA!!"
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Is the truth a defense for that kind of thing? I mean, it may be absolutely true that someone told me that John Seigenthaler Sr. eats pureed babies for lunch. It may not be true that he does, in fact, slurp down the occasional tasty baby-shake, but it may be quite true that someone told me that.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
There is an existing method to change the data in the Wikipedia. Maybe before making a law, one might consider reading the web page in question to see "What one can do for his country".
he is still "a notorious homosexual nymphomaniac. He is especially well known in homosexual circles for his affinity for sucking huge filthy black cocks, and a patented oral sexual technique in which he caresses the underside of his partners ballsac with his toungue."
Now that must be some skill.
Oh, to be a Wikipedia editor at this time must be bliss. To have so much to do and to have so much purpose in life. Now if we could just get the cock out of John's mouth long enough, we could settle this affair.
The Wiki operator can disclose the IP address ofthe poster. Yes you can put up a system where anybody can enter anything they want. This has been done for hundreds of years. Have you ever heard of a public bulletin board? You see, it is called freedom of speech. If something is libelous trace the person who posted it, or change the data yourself. If you want to mandate that all Wiki posters should be id'ed and tracked, then you and others of like mind should get together and pay the Wiki operators whatever it would cost to satisfy your mandate and maybe the wiki operator will then require ID's from posters.
I find Wiki's a refreshing look at the world today that is different from all the B.S. that comes down from the corporate or government kommissars. Sure, there are a few bad apples, but this is nothing that cannot be remedied by people excercising their responsibilities. If you don't like something posted about you, then change it and complain to the wiki operator. If the Wiki operator continues to allow libelous posts he or she will lose credibility within the community and readers will eventually quit visiting.
No. My local newspaper purports to be accurate and non-libelous. Wikipedia does not. The difference (almost) is between something in a newspaper, and something scribbled on a bathroom wall.
Wikipedia is not analogous to a bathroom wall. It is one of the busiest, most visible, most used websites on the Internet. Being slandered on Wikipedia may well be worse - in terms of the number of people who get to see the disinformation - than a local newspaper.
Who here would have even known about it, if the offended person had just edited it and / or contacted Wikipedia and informed them of the libel. Wikipedia could have stopped it cold, but now we all know he might be a killer and may have spent time in Russia. The guilty often cry the loudest. Is that the outcome wanted?
I wonder, does he work for CBS where they accept any data stream from the internet as FACT?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
What people need to understand is that our law recognizes a right to anonymity on the basis that it has some social and political value. There's an equation there, a hope that the bad caused by having anonymity available will be greatly outweighed by the good. When dorks post really offensive and untrue stuff anonymously, stuff that's just bad without any redeeming value, they are hurting the cause. They are giving ammo to the people who would argue that the "bad" in the above equation outweighs the good.
That sucks. I don't agree with someone going after Wikipedia, for any number of reasons, but people need to understand that what they do has real life repercussions. If we argue the case for anonymity (and we will argue it, again and again, for as long as we have a representative government) and the opposition has cases like this to point to, it can hurt us.
Maybe this falls on deaf ears in a forum where "anonymous cowards" are pretty common, but we are just better off if people try to use something like Wikipedia responsibly, whether they are writintg or editing. The funny part is, in the most general terms the guy who is going after Wikipedia and the true advocate of anonymity are concerned with the same thing: truth. Misusing anonymity creates stupid, unfortunate battles like this.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Oh wait. I suppose he could just make the edits himself:
401 - Attention span not found
You laugh at this concept, but:
Ford Motor Company was successfully sued by the family of someone who was injured when a driver *fell asleep at the wheel*. After he fell asleep, the Ford SUV crashed.
They were awarded $61,000,000.00:
http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=4131954
Ford Loses Fatal Crash Lawsuit
Nov 17, 2005, 03:39 AM
A jury has ordered Ford to pay more than 61 million dollars to the family of a 17-year-old boy killed in a rollover accident in Florida. Lance Crossman Hall died when his friend feel asleep while driving a 1996 Explorer.
The jury said Ford was liable because it sold a vehicle with poor handling and stability. A Ford spokesman says the company plans to appeal. Hall's family claimed Ford knew the Explorer was prone to rollovers and failed to warn consumers about the vehicle's defects.
The driver of the 1996 Explorer, Melahn Parker, was charged with careless driving. A lawyer for the family says Parker attempted to regain control of the vehicle, but a handling problem with the Explorer caused it to turn sideways, triggering the rollover.
Information is flowing about the world like water into New Orleans, but so much of it is baloney. Channel that into the mind of a human race whose reasoning and critical thinking skills are getting ever more dulled, and you have a collective consciousness that is little more than a state of ideological delerium. People walk around in a haze with a world view composed of lies, myth and fantasy.
The singularity, if it does come, will not result in some metahuman utopia. It will gives us a mad god locked in a state of intellectual paralysis, an infinitely fractalized abomination locked in an endless frenzy of naval gazing and deconstruction of trivialities. Ultimately, it will lead to nothing but- ah, who cares... Do FFXII, the new Zelda or Kingdom Hearts II have release dates yet?
even if you raise it as an issue and they refuse to correct it, in my experience. I went as far as the Attorney General's office with my complaints, but the incorrect information stayed in their databases.
Trans Union are a bunch of lying crooks.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
;)
I guess that doesn't cover John Seigenthaler's right to try to sue the pants off of you.
But seriously, moving on to "libel" (which is the crux of his "case"), John has to prove malice in order to win this case, which I assume he's determined is not possible due to the fact there's not mention of a lawsuit in his article (but curiously he thinks he can still report this as "abuse" to an ISP even though he hasn't proven a thing). I would imagine that proving malice would be difficult if you take into account the author potentially had "no special expertise or knowledge". They could easily claim ignorance or a faulty source.
Furthermore, who says that authors of "real" bound and printed Encyclopedia's have an special knowledge or expertise, who is checking up on their work?
And even furthermore, who says that the statement was false? I haven't see any evidence that it is true, but I also haven't seen any evidence that it was not. We do know that the FBI attempted to screw poor John, but do we know that no one, anywhere EVER suspected him? The statement only says that "For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." Thought by whom? The author? If this is true then the statement is not false, it's only false if you assume that the author implied that some authoritative source claimed this.
1) According to Wikipedia policy, you are not supposed to write your own biography or be actively involved in the production of articles that feature you as a key player.
2) If you simply "edit it," the previous scurrilous information still appears in the article history, leaving the slander in the archive.
And a third reason - editing a Wiki entry requires a fair amount of technical competency. Though no Slashdot readers would have problems figuring out how to register and edit entries, is it fair to demand that a senior citizen who might barely know how to email go through the entire Wiki learning curve, just to protect his or her good name?
I don't think the gentleman's intent is to sue anybody. His reason for getting the entry changed was to make sure his reputation remained unbesmirched. His reason for writing the USA Today article was to point out to the public the difficulties he encountered - he is trying to stimulate discussion, not quash it.
If you build it, they will come...
It's quite straightforward. If he feels he's been libelled, which is illegal, he has to sue. The ISPs can't give up the information he's looking for without a court subpoena.
"My only remote chance of getting the name, I learned, was to file a "John or Jane Doe" lawsuit against my 'biographer.' Major communications Internet companies are bound by federal privacy laws that protect the identity of their customers, even those who defame online. Only if a lawsuit resulted in a court subpoena would BellSouth give up the name."
He has a personal attorney already. He's clearly upset. So, then he should sue, get a subpoena, and prosecute his case against the person who libelled him.
The greatest advancement in free speech since the
gutenberg press, to be squashed by the law? A guy this obviously hypocritical might have something to hide. Like maybe a skeleton or two in his closet?
Having been the victim of on-line defamation before myself (by an ex on LiveJournal in my case), I believe something should be done here, because at present you basically have little comeback, or none at all if you're in a different jurisdiction to the hosting web site.
On the other hand, that's not a popular view around here, because it has the audacity to suggest that my right not to be publicly attacked based on incorrect and misleading information might be more important than someone else's precious right to free speech under all circumstances ever, even if they're speaking hurtful untruths. When I made the mistake of mentioning this before, I was told to shove it by a large number of Slashbots, most of whom have presumably never been on the receiving end of this and thought it was all terribly funny.
Even I acknowledge that there are serious free speech issues here, though. If you can force anyone to take down anything by simply telling the host you disagree with it, then justified free speech is damaged. If you require some standard of proof to go with the allegation that the content is unreasonable, then you just gave the host the role of a court. If you never remove anything, then people can be damaged. (I'm still rather disturbed that the Slashdot editors didn't make an exception and remove an anonymous post containing the personal contact information of the father of the convicted con artist mentioned in a story the other day, whose health and property were very much endangered by posting that information publicly.)
A little older and wiser now, I've concluded that there is definitely a problem here. Unfortunately, I've also concluded that there is no easy solution that is fair to both sides in a dispute.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
My 1930's book of knowledge has a quite interesting, very positive, entry on an up-and coming German leader.
"It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it." --George Washington
Does /. realize just how big this has gotten? i know its very much flamebait / faux par to even mention Digg - but its gone truly Viral, very nearly 6,000 digg's (thats voted for - in non dig-speak) as well as 814 comments, its now the #1 article of the year on digg.
Also the site in question (www.PriceRitePhoto.com) as well as 2 other sites that seem to be owned by the same company - TheCameraMall.com and EmpirePhoto.com - are either down or incredibly slow, most likely due to dig users either using good 'ole VGET or this new fangled "Spam Vampire" thing or even just opera users checking the 'reload every 15 seconds' option. ;)
I for one *Really* wanna see a copy of there monthly bandwidth bill!
If you have a medical condition that prevests you from comfortabley viewing URL's that contain the word "digg", look away now...
http://www.digg.com/deals/Abusive_New_York_Camera_ Store_Threatens_Blogger
Also - these are a MUST LISTEN !!!
http://danny.st/tmp/pricerite.mp3
http://danny.st/tmp/pricerite2.mp3
Apart from that, all I have to say is: PWNED!!!
And......
http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/video1.sht ml
Social projects sometimes go off with a good start. The lack of accountability will only continue to challenge the current implementation of Wikipedia.
BTW, I'm really tired of seeing companies and products mentioned in Wikipedia. It's becoming another ad-rag.
When MY house got graffitied the other day, I had a note on my door from the local police department within two hours. It said that I had one week to remove the graffiti, after which time I'd get fined. I'm not saying Wikipedia should be held to these standards, but homeowners often are.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
.....but i posted this in the wrong dam artical, see the one about "Consumer Strikes Back at Crooked Online Retailer" if you want this to make any sence. Mental note: Never operate a computer after ingesting large amounts of hash-cakes.
We should also hold Target responsible for when some kid spraypaints Tina has AIDS on its walls...
Site owners can be held responsible if they refuse to take off libelous comments after a legal request is made, but there is no way that site providers or ISPs should or can monitor postings to ensure that no defamation is taking place. Yes it may suck that anyone can post something to a website that is totally untrue about another person, but unless you want to turn the Internet into a speech regulator and pretty much disallow any negative information then you are SOL in my opinion.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Sounds like he picked up some tips on censorship while he spent those 10 years in Russia planning JFK's assassination.
I like how people compare wikipedia to other media, as if they're the same. It really is just a big bathroom wall, and everyone is issued markers on the way in. Don't like something, just write over it! Why can't newspapers just say, don't like something, print your own article. That's their defense of libel? Wikipedia's founders are the ones who should be responsible for libel, since they're hosting it, and they created the system in the first place - and are well aware of it's shortcomings by now.
i s_protected
Or they wouldn't need this policy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:This_page_
OR need to protect their main page. The only difference between protecting the main page and Mr. S's is that wikipedia's reputation (and hence income) depends on the main page, and they don't give a damn about Mr. S's reputation and income unless the law forces them to care.
Which is why the libel law exists in the first place.
There are hundreds of conspiracy theory books about the Kennedy assassinations.
Is every single one of them libel?
I don't think so.
This is the only time Siegenthaler mentions libel in the article, which is significant because it means Siegenthaler did not call the statements libelous. The /. summary assumes not only that he made this charge, but that it is a true charge, stating that the editorial was "expressing outrage at a libelous biography".
In fact, Siegenthaler would have a hard time proving libel, because in the American system, in order to be libellous, a statement has to be damaging to the reputation, and it has to be untrue. (It also has to be either knowingly untrue, or made with malicious disregard for the truth.) Of the two statements Siegenthaler cites, one is that he spent a decade in Russia. I'll assume that Siegenthaler can document that that is not true, and at the height of the Cold War, spending time in Russia would cause some kinds of people to look at you with suspicion. But here in 2005, well after the Cold War, is it really that damaging to the reputation?
That leaves the second statement, which was also seriously misrepresented in the article summary. The summary claims that the Wikipedia article "suggested [Siegenthaler] was involved with the assasination of JFK". But here's the actual statement as reprinted in the editorial:
Let me change hats here for a second and tell you what's wrong with this statement from the Wikipedian point of view: it's too damn vague. He was thought by whom? On what basis? What specific role was he alleged to have played? What attempts to prove the alleged involvement were made, which resulted in "nothingHowever, just as art does not have to be good art to deserve the legal protections afforded to art, the fact that this is a sloppy and vague statement does not change the fact that in order to be libellous, it has to be untrue. If someone actually did think that Siegenthaler was involved in the assassinations, it is not an untrue statement. There's people who think that Bill Clinton assassinated Vince Foster. Those people are simpletons and morons, generally, and many of them are the same kinds of assholes who were responsible for Foster's death, targeting him in the press for no better reason than that he was a friend of Clinton and thus considered a Washington combatant to be neutralized. But it is still a fact that many people think, even after Ken Starr concluded that Foster's death was suicide, that it was murder on Clinton's orders.
Now, for having said that someone out there thinks that, am I going to be missummarized on Slashdot, reported as "Anonymous Coward committed libel by suggesting that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster"? Whether he appreciates the irony or not, Siegenthaler is doing exactly what he rails against his anonymous detractor for doing. The statements against Siegenthaler do not state that Siegenthaler was ever credibly believed by anyone to be involved in any assassination. But they could lead a careless reader to jump to that conclusion. In turn, Siegenthaler did not actually call the statements against him libellous, and as we have seen, he probably couldn't. But thanks to his clever construction, he got the Slashdot editors to say it for him.
The remedy for disliked speech is more speech opposing it. Courts might offer remedies against publishing lies, or unproven assertions. But getting a remedy from an anonymous, transient contributor will prove difficult to impossible, and rare - while the long process allows the damage to be done if unhindered by the inhibitions of deterrence from the threat of a verdict.
Instead, people should learn to have no respect for publications without accountability. We already have societal values where everyone learns that statements must be backed with evidence to be credible. Perhaps "common carrier" publications need to allow unedited responses to any publication to avoid liability. For example, recent editing in Wikipedia's "swiftboating" entry first saw a battle between two polarized, exclusive political meanings of the current term and its practice. But now it has settled to an informative version, largely acceptable to consensus. We're still experimenting with free expression. The more we talk about it freely, the better we'll get at it. And now that we do it so much, it's clear that the right to express comes with a responsibility not just to express accurately when damage is at stake, but also to consider the expression with clarity and skepticism.
--
make install -not war
>>If you care about it, do the work.
Kind of a short-term fix though, isn't it?
He can edit his Wikipedia entry for the remainder of his life -- which is probably winding down -- but who does this after he is gone? Or too infirm to monitor it? Or living in the bowels of the Congo doing humanitarian work with no hope of Internet access?
This guy is looking at his legacy. Apparently, he was a heavyweight in the Kennedy administration and took some very physical blows for the civil rights movement. But if he hadn't almost accidentally stumbled on this Wikipedia entry, he might have been forever remembered as "a guy who may have killed the Kennedys" by almost every casual researcher from here on out.
Moreover, twenty years from now, when he is dead and gone and this unknown poster slinks back up onto whatever the Wikipedia has become to once again change the posting, who is going to clear this guys name?
If he doesn't like it, he can change it. It's not like Wikipedia is the ultimate source of intellectual knowledge... it's a free encyclopedia that serves as a help as an intellectual forum. Who cares about what the law says about the libel and shit? Stop being little bitches that are like "well the law says this, so i should do it" - question it, you morons. They're going to start censoring the internet if more and more of you are complacent with the powers to be. Wikipedia is awesome, as it is flawed as well, which serves its purpose of being a free encyclopedia. If he doesn't like it, then he should stop being a whiny bitch and change the damn thing, and if he can't do that and must use a libel law, then hell, I'll support people vandalizing his page.
> Federal law also protects online corporations -- BellSouth, AOL, MCI Wikipedia, etc. -- from libel >lawsuits. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that "no >provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." This is a fundimental legal flaw in my opinion. This act should never have been passed. If a website publishes something under anonymity they should be held responsible. Just like traditional media. There is nothing in the arrival of new technology that justifies or changes in any way the treatment of anonymity or accountability for publishers (websites in this case).
Looks like America is falling.
Old man is bitter at being highly suspect in the murder of some president, old man flees countery, old man at least wants his acusations correct, old man ought just to submit a proposed change to said article. Next old man needs to get over himself.
There would be a really easy fix for Wikipedia: prohibit "anonymous" accounts. Require anyone with update access to pay some token fee (like $10 or $20/yr.) via credit card, and collect a bunch of real-world information on the authors in the process.... Then, authors of patently obviously inaccurate or misleading information could be held accountable for their actions; a little self-censorship with an eye toward quality control could significantly improve many of their articles, particularly those pertaining to history, politics, and current events.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
of course, who wasn't once considered to have been involved with JFK's assassination....
Posit 1: Someone goes to the Wikipedia entry for abortion. They change every instance of fetus and embryo to baby. They change every instance of abortion and death to murder. They change every instance of doctor and/or physician to murder. Is Is it fair, unbiased, factual, and correct?
Posit 2: Someone goest to the entry for evolution and adds " as directed by God." to the first sentence. Is it the same article? Is it fair, unbiased, factual, and correct?
Posit 3: Someone goes to the entry for "The Holocaust" and changes "The Holocaust is the name applied to the " to "The Holocaust is the name given to the attempt by Jews to destroy the future of the Aryan race by claiming ". Is it the same article? Is it fair, unbiased, factual, and correct?
I believe this is what the parent poster is referrign to.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Are we saying that a wiki is somehow above the laws and should be exonerated by default of any consequences, along with its administrators, host and everybody, except perhaps that malicious contributor who can't be tracked down anyway?
Exactly! If someone paints something libelous against you in a house wall, do you sue the house owner for libel? It's only the malicious graffitti vandal who can't be tracked down anyway who is responsible.
You can't put up a system where anybody can enter anything they want, in high exposure, and expect to get away with it when something illegal is inserted.
Exactly like a blank wall. Anybody can write anything on it and it's exposed to anyone who drives by.
His is a valid point, wikipedia did slander him, and due to its anonymous nature it is hard to find redress. Yet our mainstream media, constrained as it is by standards of journalistic excellence and anti-defamation laws also has shortcomings, We don't dismiss it, and we shouldn't dismiss wikipedia.
I usually look up information through answers.com, for every query it lists entries from wikipedia and other sources, such as Columbia University Press, etc. I'm always struck by the higher usefullness of the wikipedia entry, and I was thinking of shifting all my searches there directly. That quality comes from their community process.
Unfortunately that same process leads to these situations. That does not mean that it should be changed. Yes it can be unfair, yes it can lead to outright lies, yes it can be unjustly damaging, and yes all efforts should be made to combat this, but its no reason to change wikipedia's essential nature. Take the information with a larger grain of salt than you would an entry from Britannica.
> Federal law also protects online corporations -- BellSouth,
> AOL, MCI Wikipedia, etc. -- from libel lawsuits. Section
> 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996,
> specifically states that "no provider or user of an
> interactive computer service shall be treated as the
> publisher or speaker." That legalese means that, unlike
> print and broadcast companies, online service providers
> cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on
> citizens posted by others.
Well, if it makes Mr. Seigenthaler feel any better, print
and broadcast companies pretty much slander and libel at
will anyway. They hide behind "freedom of speech", "freedom
of the press", and "protected sources" to lie about anybody
the feel the need to. But of course they couldn't get away
with it without a court system which rarely holds them
accountable.
The larger and more disturbing aspect of Wikipedia is the
lack of scholarship and accountability.
(Caveat: IANAL)
All you have established is that it is very *likely* that someone thought Sigenthaler was involved. But likelyhood is not proof or truth.
Because you have not established the truth of the statement, you may not conclude that it is not defamatory.
What's more, if Siegenthaler were a private figure, even if you could establish the truth, you could still be sued for defamation merely for publishing information that no "reasonable person" would publish about a private citizen.
Source: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-defamation.php
Hey, I saw you fuck your mother last night then kill her.
Now, you can either A) deal with my troll, or B) sue Slashdot and try and force Slashdot to be liable for anything I say. The problem is that in a place like Slashdot, too many people are posting for any moderator to possibly keep up. Suggesting that people be able to bring suit over Internet postings (and a Wiki is just a glorified internet posting) would simply break the Internet as a means of communication. If Slashdot could be subpoenaed for my contact information so that you can so me, I imagine Slashdot would simply cut their liabilities by removing the message boards.
Simply put, ought not be held to the same standards that printed media are held to. Internet postings (and Wiki's) by their very nature are more like face to face discussions then a book or newspaper. I can assure you that, at least in the US, there is nothing you libelous to a friend or group of friends that could ever result in a lawsuit if someone overheard. Hell, I doubt even Europe with their much stronger libel laws could possibly nail anyone for something said in conversation.
For better or for worse, the Internet has imposed new challenges and opportunities in speech. Sure, any idiot can post into the Wiki their crazy ass conspiracy theory in someone biography. On the other hand, any Phd can also post their research into a Wiki in complete detail. Any archeologist can post his work on the Polynesian people of the island of whatever. Any mathematician can post a nice tutorial on how to do some mathematical operation.
The Internet will give and it will take. Personally, I think it gives a hell of a lot more then it takes. The best solution is to simply accept the Internet for what it is, recognize that it has limitations, but also recognizes the massive power it gives us well beyond those limitations.
. . . and thus there's a damn high bar for libel, as there should be. His bewailing common carrier protections is his way of trying to make sure the little guy can't publish, which is what this crap is really all about.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Wikipedia is a great resource if you don't mind having your facts mixed with fiction (In which case you should just talk to a politician instead).
Wiki is fraught with personal opinion, general consensus and rumor-mill myth that Wiki nerds generally accept as fact.
These days the phrase "I saw it on TV..." has been replaced with "I read it on Wiki so it must be true."
* Si hoc legere scis numium eruditionis habes *
Man, if I were him, I would have left the "assassin" material in there. It makes him much more interesting. Chicks dig that.
Did anyone else catch the fact that this poster just compared the WikiPedia to the Bible and Plato's writings?
ROTFL.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Mr. Seigenthaler, you feel kind of helpless when the power elite that you used to be part of doesn't control information anymore, don't you? And it is characteristic that your first reaction is for the government to come down on people who say something bad about you.
Mr. Seigenthaler, it's the 21st century. Anybody can write anything about anybody else anonymously and expose that to several hundred million Internet users. You may think that this is a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. Either way, it's not going to go away. Get used to it. Or don't. It's not you but younger generations that will be living with it.
As for Wikipedia, it is only distinguished by its reputation. That is, on the whole, people find it informative and accurate enough to be useful and interesting. I doubt that the article about you is going to affect that either way, whether it is accurate or not.
Just do what other people do and follow the regular dispute procedures on Wikipedia, and stop behaving like a Washington insider and butthead.
And as our law stands, now, you're wasting your time suing "print and broadcast companies" for libel or slander. Unlike say a physician or a small business, you can't win by demonstrating that what the newspaper or TV network said was untrue and nasty about you because they're incompetent or biased. Our law, sad to say, assumes incompetence as the normal state of affairs in a newsroom and no more holds them to account for it than the law holds a 3-year-old at fault for something he might do. You have to demonstrate actual, willful malice, which is virtually impossible to do if the news source shows any care at covering its tracks.
"60 Minutes," for instance, could do a segment about this author, saying exactly what this Wikipedia article said and, as long as they were merely sloppy and incompetent, they'd be sue-proof. Only if they were caught on tape saying, "Heck, we know this guy had nothing to do with the killing of JFK and RFK, but we hate his guts, so let's run it anyway," would they be in trouble.
In short, this is yet another article by a journalist or, in this case, a "retired journalist," trying to spin self-serving nonsense about the Old Media being good and the New Media being bad. In reality, both have capable and talented people and both have their jerks and liars.
And there seems little indication that the Old Media does much to keep the jerks from rising to the very top of the profession. Dan Rather got his initial start in TV journalism by slandering some elementary school kids in Dallas, inaccurately reporting they cheered when told of JFK's death. They weren't told of his death by school officials, but on being told that they were being sent home early they, like any kids, cheered. That was established within minutes and the local CBS affiliate was so outraged that Rather's lied and ran the story anyway, that they refused to do CBS news feeds for several days. Over forty years later and at the top of his profession, Rather was still displaying his "All Republicans are evil, even the kids" bigotry, when he got muddied by the Bush Memogate scandal and was finally forced to retire a year early. And even then, it wasn't because he was incompetent. It was because getting caught at a very obviously stupid slander hurt CBS's credibility in the middle of a heated political campaign. When that "hit" piece on Bush went sour, it meant that other hit pieces in the pipeline would be less credible.
In case you didn't catch the story, alleged memos critical of Bush from the early 1970s were such poor forgeries, they were not done on a typewriter from the era but in a recent version of Word at its default settings. By my count, the next day after that "60 Minute" airing, some 1200 Old Media stories echoing the story as true were out. Only through some New Media blogs, particularly Little Green Apples, was the lie exposed and a still excusing himself Rather forced to retire early.
Wikipedia isn't perfect and their articles often do have a spin. But I trust it more than I trust quite a few sources in the Old Media, particularly Reuters and the AP. After all, if something is inaccurate in Wikipedia, I can fix it myself.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
Irony,
I had to Google TANSTAAFL, the third hit (and the one I clicked on) was Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has potential and is "entertaining" but I'd never use it for real research.
Uh...that's, like, okay.
Because Wikipedia links directly to original sources.
The reason that it was so crucial for old-media encyclopedias to be so heavily examined is because it was a pain in the ass to check original sources.
Most things that people hear word-of-mouth or in the newspaper are less well-checked than what I read on Wikipedia. And that's what I and 99% of the people out there use Wikipedia for. We aren't trying to use it as an authoritative source for writing a doctoral thesis, where the propagation of even a single error might be significant. We're trying to get real-world usable information. And Wikipedia does a better job than anything else out there of doing this.
A lot of people bash Wikipedia because it doesn't seem like it should work. It clashes mightily with the common computer security approach of accepting absolutely no attacks against something. Wikipedia, however, takes advantage of a completely different mechanism that most people undervalue -- recoverability. *Anyone* can vandalize Wikipedia. Vandalizing Wikipedia en-masse, however, is totally useless, because the bulk of Wikipedia's content *is* useful and *does* keep improving.
If someone thinks that Wikipedia is bad, fine. Let them *branch* Wikipedia into a "stable branch", and they can only allow fully reviewed changes to be added, or whatever. That's absolutely legal. There's at least some argument that maybe Wikipedia only needed to be wild and loose in its early days. I don't really think that it's likely, but instead of bitching about how Wikipedians are doing their volunteer work that they're giving to the world, sit down and fix it, you know?
Personally, I think that the rate of update and the value of more articles outweighs ideological arguments about review, but whatever.
Maybe at some point, there will be some concept of a gradient of article stability, and it will require more work to change an older article. [shrug] I dunno. But I hate all the nay-saying about WP.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
While Mr. Seigenhaler has the right to express his opinions about Wikipedia and ISPs, it doesn't mean they're well thought out or well researched. The man is merely complaining because he doesn't like what was said. He (or a reprasentative for him) could research Wikipedia (it would take all of 20 minutes before he understood the Wikipedia concept). Then, he could proactivly effect his situation, by changing the Wikipedia article to what he deems appropriate, or take another action via moderation. How hard is that? I realize he's old, and old people *in general* don't take kindly to computers. But, if he's gonna go on wikipedia and complain about it, he might as well learn about the service he's damning.
More importantly, the concept that ISPs need to be held responsible for their users is just troublesome to me. They are private companies (well, cable is oddly regulated, but I digress). How is holding a cable company legally responsible for say libel committed on a personal blog any different than holding cable companies legally responsible if say Comedy Central decides that they will let shows use the Fuck-word after 11pm? How can we as sensible Americans see the folly in Cable Network censorship, yet seem to think that censorship on ourselves directly (more formally, government mandated that private companies do so) is acceptable (at least mildly).
I would like to keep as many of my resonable rights as possible. Does no one else?
The fact that WikiPedia can be used in such a manner, terribly diminishes the worth of WikiPedia's articles.
Wikipedia's worth is simply determined by its usage, no more and no less. And apparently, enough people use it for Mr. Seigenthaler to worry about what is says about him.
How do you know an article that is based on fact vs. an article that is based on vindictiveness?
Whatever gave you the idea that everything you read is based on fact? Do you seriously believe that everything the Bush administration publishes is based on fact? That everything in the EB is based on fact? That everything in your textbooks is based on fact? That everything in the newspaper is based on fact? Do you make a habit out of believing accusations against people without evidence? How naive can you be?
The problem isn't with the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is completely honest about what it is.
The problem is that people like Seigenthaler and you need to grow up yourself and stop nurturing the illusion that publication is some kind of quality control. Start using your head and start asking for evidence, for whatever claims you hear.
As for Mr. Seigenthaler and his little problem: the Wikipedia provides the means for him to correct those issues he feels inaccurate. If the original author is still around, they can hash it out on the discussion page. Maybe one side or the other will provide some evidence to support the accusation or the defense. That's all there's to it. But, as he told us, he isn't interested in correcting the information, he is interested in dragging the original author in front of a court, and I'm sorry, that kind of powerplay just doesn't work anymore in the 21st century.
Wikipedia is more relevant to *my* life than Plato or the Bible. The first is mostly obsolete ideas, the second is a lot of horseshit. IMHO, of course.
Personally, I think that you just reacted like that because you've been told time over and over that the Bible is incredibly important. [shrug]
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Does anyone find it at all ironic that an ex-media figure and ex-gov't official is in conflict with what is rightfully freedom of speech? Putting aside the direct democracy model of wikipedia, isn't it ironic this man's libel claim is example " numero uno" against pubishing models that have no authoritative "voice".
Wikipedia reading and reference material this year is "banned" from the San Diego Public School System. Students are taught to "not" use Google as well. Reference material is only acceptable if cited from the official school "eLibrary" online system.
There's a rip-tide pulling democratic society freedoms to the watery depths...
imagine the sound of an old-school record scratcher:
"wiki, wiki, wiki"
Well, my name is Wiki
And I'm here to say
There's a brand new reference
And it's on its way
If you're kind-of famous
If you're straight or gay
It really doesn't matter
Wiki says it anyway
Wiki doesn't care
If it's right or wrong
You can't trace the writer
Their IP is long gone
So, if you killed a Kennedy
Or made a soviet pact
Just fix it in Wiki
And it's instantly fact
Peace.
Werd to yo mutha
Health Insurance Quotes
1: How do you handle contributors who can't tell fact from Urban Legend?
2: How do you keep the project from being taken over by those with a particular idealogical bent? (See the ongoing battle over entries dealing with 'Scientology'.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
All of what you say about Wikipedia is true as far as I know, but the problems also exist everywhere else: the internet at large and traditional media.
The differences are that on a Wiki
* anyone can also FIX it
* there is a publicly available history of changes
* there is a system for notification of changes
So at their worst, Wikis are no worse than anything else, but in all other cases they are, _or could be_ far better.
This is the same as Fox News' "some people say..." tactic. Despite Seigenthalers' outrage and subsequent legal thrashing about and op/ed salvo, there is little to be done about it whether Wikipedia or Fox said it. What separates Wikipedia from Fox is that while the former finds this an aberration in their service, the latter sees it as a useful tool. There is a difference and it's unfortunate that Seigenthaler hasn't picked up on it. Perhaps he has picked up on it but his anger has made him ignore it. I say this because he has chosen to deal with Wikipedia the way you would deal with Fox when he should have quietly and without legal recourse simply had the statement removed.
Finally, I would like to say that I side with Seigenthaler on the removal of this statement, but feel that his reaction to it was inapropriate. Wikipedia was already in the process of addressing this issue while the trend at Fox is in the opposite direction. Not all sources of information are alike.
Nobody should be defending this. If wikipedia has serious problems with vandalism, and it does, you need to acknowledge that. Prostelytizing isn't going to work.
There is nothing insightful about what he said. At most, it's just sardonic. Nothing else.
What the hell are "free expression values"?
It's insane to hold a site like wikipedia liable for libel by their users. That would be like holding the City of New York liable for murder's committed on its streets, or paper manufacturers liable for libel printed on their paper.
Is this just a case of another old man who doesn't understand what the internet is? How can one that supported a free speech center rant about wikipedia - the result of free speech.
Next time, perhaps he should think about logging onto wikipedia and editing his page if he doesn't like it. After all, that's how the damn thing operates.
I've been sampling all my (and friends') old cassettes and vinyl for CD burns. Sometimes with cassettes, freedb will know what the album is, but less often than it's clueless.
Typing song titles in is a chore, particularly with as much marerial as I've been using. So I started using Google, and cut-and-paste.
Google fails it as often as not. I'll often go through a dozen web articles before finding a track listing using the search term (e.g.) halen ou812 "track listing". The spammers are, unfortunatly, beating Google.
OTOH, the wiki rarely fails in this respect. They don't have track listings for every title I look for, but they do for most, and I haven't found an inaccurate one yet.
Try finding track listings in your Britannica!
(MRC="quagmire")
PS- sampling my and friends' analog media is legal in my country (USA)
How can so many people be so naive? It's sad, even for Slashdot.
Everyone says this, ignoring the fact that every time it happens it degrades the value of Wikipedia. If Wikipedia is unreliable, then it's worthless as an encyclopedia. Anyone claiming that this is OK is just being foolish.
The real question raised by this story - is how valid is anything seen on Wikipedia? My guess is that 80% of the content there is invalid. Be interesting to see a study by a third party on the validity of Wikipedia content.
I have several times tried to post contrary material on HIV/AIDS on the Wikipedia site - but it's always censored. What's seen there is a classical spin by the medical/chemical industrial complex propaganda
Naturally every time I suggest altnerative viewpoints on HIV/AIDS in this "forum" - attempts are made to discredit by giving me negative or zero scores - which in my opinion - is suttle approach to censorship.
Yes, I'm serious.
There are 3 cases, the third explains my title:
1) If something is well known and common knowledge, it will probably be correct on wikipedia.
2) If it is realatively unknown, wikipedia might have it right, or might not, and who'd know unless an expert read the article? Even then, nobody seems to list references used so there is no way to double check. An entry on electron orbits comes to mind.
3) If something it well known and common knowledge BUT UNTRUE, it will be all out war on wikipedia and whichever user is more stubborn is the one who wins.
Thus, we have an encyclopedia listing urban legends as fact.
Now, I LOVE the idea of wikipedia. I have made suggestions and may make additions to technical entries that will hopefully save someone hours of debugging in the future. This could be incredibly useful. But if someone stays up late and vandalizes every entry I make, what can I do about it? Nothing. Maybe some sort of reputation system would help.
Wikipedia is an interesting experiment, but are any of us surprised that people use the Wikipedia to promulgate their personal political views? As my grandmother always said (usually when someone said something unkind), "consider the source". These are just other people on the web who are rarely experts on the topics they're writing about.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
Why is it that people get in a hissy fit about something that isn't even considered an authoritative source?
This guy is obviously out of touch. Johnny doesn't seem to understand the medium and is focusing only on one bad point instead of all of the benefits offered by wiki. I administer a wiki knowledge base and although occasional bit of false data does get reported it is easy enough to correct it. Besides wiki is policed by it's community and offers the ability to be refined. I don't recall Mr. T trying to sue over the "Mr. T Ate My balls" sites that popped up some time ago.
There are several issues here.
Should the 'victim' have the right to pursue a libel suit if he wants? Sure. No problem. Have him hire his lawyer and take it to the courts.
Should internet chat rooms, bulletin boards, and other services and conduits be regulated and held accountable for the actions of their users? Heck no. Let the disclaimer stand. These services are a medium of communication. Would any sane human being suggest that AT&T or Sprint provide a chaperone to sit in on every telephone (or even conference) call just to be certain that all of the information and opinions presented meet with the current governmentally and legally sanctioned view of what is proper? And who determines what is proper, anyway? The FBI? The Republican Party? The Catholic church? The Nazi Party? The Kansas school board?
Should those services be required to participate with courts and law enforcement pursuing their duly appointed tasks? Absolutely, within reason as defined by the law. Shaping the proper laws to cover the situations that might arise being another issue and discussion.
Should Wikipedia or any other conduit or service comply with requests from 'victims' asking for the removal or alteration of content considered by them to be incorrect or inflamatory? That is a customer service issue, not a legal one.
Can any single source of information ever be considered perfect? No, absolutely not. Any two not-plagarising authors will always have differing perspectives influenced by their knowledge, experience, and the society in which they were raised. That is why any serious research examines multiple independent sources.
Wikipedia is a phenomenally wonderful resource in the free exchange of ideas. It should be nurtured and protected by any free thinking person, keeping in mind that with free speech:
1) not everyone agrees with you
2) you frequently get what you pay for
And the reason that the original poster gave:
is the reason that I agree with typical that it's horseshit.Denny
Erecting the wall of separation between church and state is absolutely essential in a free society. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm sort of with you on #2 without the profanity, but #1 just shows you didn't do so well in first year Western Philosophy.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
here he is getting indignant and sue happy because free speech bit him a little tiny bit.
yet he is supposed to be on a bunch of foundations supporting free speech.
he doesn't even know the basics--sometimes free speech hurts. and if you go sue happy every time it happens, eventually you and your ilk will undermine the good part of free speech.
wikipedia has a great many wonderful attributes, yet he has probably never even tried it. that makes him ignorant and short-sighted, not to mention unforgiving.
So basically, our freedoms of speech, press, and anonymity are Bad Things because one person wrote something false and mean about John Seigenthaler Sr. on the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and is not a factual source. That's a fantastic way to look at things. I have one question though, Johnny... if the bio was wrong and you knew it, why didn't you simply volunteer yourself and correct it? You were able to get an article out on USA Today's web site, so surely you could have typed up the corrections on the wiki? But this really isn't about truth anyway is it? I mean you are pointing your lawyers around looking for someone's goose aren't you? I think this has a little more to do with media attention and money than the truth of a speculative biography, which could be corrected at any moment by a more knowlegable writer.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
I doubt most of you have ever met Mr. Seigenthaler but I have. He's personal friends with my brother and his wife and I've met him socially on a few occasions. He's a completely gentile man who is one of the most respective citizens in Nashville, regardless if you agree or not with his politics.
Seigenthaler has worked his entire career at the pinnacle of traditional journalism, both in Nashville as the longtime editor-in-chief of the Tennessean newspaper and editorial page director for USA Today for nearly a decade. He was brought back to USA Today in the past year to investigate allegations of reporters fabricating events in stories (which he proved). His Freedom Forum project is also highly respected for the work it does. And his son is someone most of us have seen on TV as the weekend anchor for NBC Nightly News and he regularly fills in for Brian Williams during the week.
So you can imagine someone of his journalistic credentials is smeared not only in Wikipedia but also in two other places, he's likely not going to take that lying down. Especially when he was a close personal friend of the guy the "article" implies he had a hand in murdering. I'd be pissed too. And whoever did this hatchet job certainly underestimates the resources that he has at his disposal to find out who did this. Libel is not protected by the First Amendment, period. Reading back the text of the First Amendment ignores 200+ years of constitutional case law on this subject. I've seen responses to this Slashdot article that say "well, it's Wikipedia...he should just edit it himself" or "well, you can't prove libel for things that might be in dispute". Horsehockey.
First, he wasn't participating in the Wikipedia process and doesn't feel he should intervene to set the record straight because if there was a real editing process, it likely would have never seen the light of day. Virtually ever single newspaper and newsroom in the country would do a fact check before publishing a bio on him. Wikipedia as a concept has proven to be interesting and very useful and is an interesting read on many topics. But its Achilles' Heel is that fact that anyone can edit an article anonymously and that makes it susceptible to libelous edits like this. Journalism is just about good editing as well as reporting and research. Wikipedia has a few editorial controls but a lot of junk can get in and stay there before anyone notices the fraud.
In the end, I think the whole brouhaha will be good for Wikipedia in general because it will cause the project to pay closer attention to some of these edits. The anonymous nature of the reporting process will undoubtedly come under close scrutiny. The fact that the online community is talking about journalism and wiki in the 21st century is a good thing. And maybe Mr. Seigenthaler will actually be able to confront his accuser in a court of law.
Our most imperious and grandiose asshat, Herr Seigenthaler Sr., seeks to discredit Wiki and other "open" and "user supported" knowledge portals.
Why?
Because some asshat posted some obvious bullshit about him on Wiki.
Hmmm... Haven't we (those of us that use the internet) figured out by now that the internet is a place that will never be locked down and 100% verifiable, like the way (ahem... let me clear my throat first...) Our Shining Light of Truth and Beauty, our oh so un-biased and abso-motherfucking-lutley truthful Broadcast Media are?
If our most imperious and grandiose asshat, Herr Seigenthaler Sr had half a fucking brain, he would have either had Wiki remove/correct the offending and incorrect information, or joined Wiki and removed it himself.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
If I had the points you'd get em!!!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
What I fear more for Wikipedia is the group-mind it creates. It's been said that the IQ of a mob is equivalent to the IQ of its smartest member divided by the number of people in the mob. Similarly, I fear the veracity of entries will be based on things which "everyone knows" even when they're not true, particularly if they disagree with what people feel is the truth. Good citation of sources helps, but cited sources can be wrong too.
In the end, I see Wikipedia not as a primary source, but a good springboard. You can use it to get a general idea on the subject, then branch out to better and more accurate research methods. And, if you find information not in the article, or which the article incorrectly answers, you go back and fix the entry, neh?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
there is no editorial control or standard of any substance. None. Zero.
Nor do they try to hide that fact. Take a good look at any source of information more complex than 2+2=4, you will find some slant in it.
Every entry is free game for someone with a crackpot theory, hidden agenda, or just plain lack of knowledge, to make a modification and have questionable, if not downright wrong, information published without any oversight.
I think you mean paid oversight. In any area which matters, there tends to be a lot of eyes looking at information and either rolling back or fixing content as needed. That's the point of a Wiki, community oversight. Does it work in every case? No, but neither does having a paid editor either (*cough* CBS: GWB's service record *cough*). The fact is, you should never trust a single source of information to be perfect in every case. And that is one of the advantages Wikipedia have going for them, they have no sigle editor to push a bias. Consider for a moment how two different forms of media handle this sort of thing. If the Wall Street Journal makes a mistake (and they do) they publish a retraction burried in the middle of the paper, with little to no fanfare. In the end, most people will never know of the error. On a wikipedia article, it's likely that someone will eventually call bullshit on a mistake and correct it. From that point on, anyone looking at that article will see the corrected information. And, assuming a point is open for debate, you often get both sides of the debate represented, rather than the side the paid editor is on.
Here in this thread everyone is saying, "this is just some old bitter man" or "I bet this guy ought to be looked at." But what if someone put up a web site, or maybe just a Wikipedia article, called, oh let's say - The Iamtherealmikeisarapistandpedophile.com and then made completely unfounded accusations all based on unfounded supposition and unfounded conjectures. What is "Truth", afterall? It's just a relative thing, right? As soon as Iamtherealmike found this information, I have a feeling that his idea of the relativity of truth would disappear and he would be outraged, as anyone accused falsely of heinous criminal acts would be. What is his relief from the lies I wrote and Wikipedia printed?
He would have the same recourse which the article mentioned.
I don't think so, and if it was any of you that discovered an article out of the blue accusing you of a crime wouldn't think so, and fortunately enough 500 plus years of law concerning slander back this up. I would have committed slander and I should face trail and be judged and if found guilty I should be punished for my crime.
Agreed.
If Wikipedia was my publisher, they should be tried, judged, and if found guilty punished as well. Otherwise, there is no relief for Iamtherealmike. The article can stay up forever and he has no chance to show it is untrue.
It depends on what you mean by "publisher". Wikipedia, like the phone company, is considered a common carrier. e.g. They neither claim the right nor the responsibility for editing what is posted. To try to force them to do otherwise would be to kill every forum on the internet. For example, I cold make a slanderous post on slashdot, should slashdot be responisible for checking every fact in every post? No, that would create such an undue burden on them. Insted, they take a hands-off approach and just let it go. However, this does not mean that: " Otherwise, there is no relief for Iamtherealmike. The article can stay up forever and he has no chance to show it is untrue." Once a carrier has been informed of the slanderous content, they are required to take it down, oth
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
If you follow the biography link http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/biography.aspx ?name=seigenthaler you will find that JS is a (historic) public figure. He is (or has been) a journalist and an activist involved with historical celebrities in public office. This IMHO makes him ineligible for libel protection as a public figure.
I agree that he should also understand as a journalist that what he really wants when he whines about the Wikipedia is editorial control, and he is too stoopud to really look for an opportunity to take care of his own problem. He could have editied the crap out himself if he didn't like it, and he could have appealed to the broader community of Wikipedians for help if he got into an edit war with vandals. What a crybaby!
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
I'd like to address the two assertions made here:
1) Correcting Info Should Be Good Enough: He is interested in a correction, which he got. Why would he want more? Because a successful libel suit provides a public venue for a plantiff to plead his case in the court of public opinion, which would eventually result in a significant number of hits from a search engine. Because the defamation of one's good name frequently has a tangible cost, and the recovery of those costs is a valid goal. Because although one libel suit nailing one person talking stink on Wikipedia ain't gonna make a whole lot of difference, the weight of a great number of people continuing to exercise their right against bogus gossip may one day come around to helping you, personally.
2) A Libel Suit Is Outdated: Excuse me if I overreach, but I think you're claiming that libel suits, if not all civil suits, are an outdated concept. Because the net moves too fast for most legal systems, or whatever. On the contrary, a political system in general, and legal system in particular, is where the rubber meets the road, where the power of the State is (theoretically, at least) brought to bear on a beef between individuals/groups/entities. As we've been discovering the hard way for recorded music, while a wide spread electronic communication network can at first make it at first difficult to pin someone down for their particular use of it, it's a medium that can be tweaked to make it all too easy to pin someone down. And once pinned down, targeted for further action. In this case, the only thing saving Joe(sephina) Blow from having his/her glory hole probed in court is a policy within Ma Bell. All too easy for a few officials to adjust a policy, and suddenly Mr. Seigenthaler has a lien on the Blow family's physical assets while the attorneys have at it.
On the other hand, if "powerplays" like this really don't work anymore, then technology has given us the tools to quickly move on to more direct modes of redress, such as Mr. Seigenthaler using a private dick to track down 65-81-97-208 for a personalized retort.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Well, how do you know that a Wikipedia article is based on facts or a complete whitewashing of a controversial issue?
I could throw in some good examples where there would be strong reasons for people to do so:
o "Intelligent" design
o the fall of Arthur Anderson Co.
o the fall of Enron (and why haven't its executives faced trials yet???)
o did the Holocaust really happen?
o the real reasons why Pol Pot hated people who wore glasses
o Hutu (or Tutsi) superiority
et freaking al.
Look at all the issues in the US surrounding the history of Custer's Last Stand, from the cracker's perspective, vs the heroic decimation of the 7th Cavalry by the Sioux (Sioux perspective), and how things have changed over the last 20 or so years with regards to Custer Battlefield National Monument...
Or why most of Asia hates Japanese apologism w.r.t. Japan's colonialism before and during WWII (and even before that).
Or Israel vs Palestine (or The Arab League vs Israel, when nothing ever seemed to be said w.r.t. Saddam Hussein's treatment of Iraqis...).
I added this to the main article, but it bares repeating:
Wikipedia has had numerous problems with Internet providers who use proxies and dynamic IP addresses, which at times inadvertantly gives their customers complete anonymity. The IP address or usernames of all Wikipedia users is logged and it is quite clear who has written what in the page history. In the case of the vandalism of Seigenthaler's article, it was shown that the IP address 65.81.97.208 was the author of the edit, and the logs show that the edit was made at 00:29, May 27, 2005 (currently the revisions are deleted, only administrators can review the content, though anyone can view the time and IP addresses of the edits). A whois of ARIN shows that the IP address belongs to BellSouth, an major U.S. Internet Service Provider. A reverse domain name lookup resolves this to adsl-065-081-097-208.sip.bna.bellsouth.net.
Wikipedia has previously had issues with other large providers, such as Australia's Ozemail (their security team told Wikipedia administrator Ta bu shi da yu that he could block the IP address range he asked about, as they said it was only being used by their proxy servers - this proved false) and AOL, who uses centralised proxies which users cannot bypass. These providers have been less than responsive to Wikipedia when asked for assistance in dealing with page vandalism.
He wrote "And so we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research -- but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them." For an expert on the first ammendment, I find this to be strange position. According to the , cable records can be subpoened by a Federal agency. Surely he would know this?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
So, who's up for starting the new Seigenthaler article on Wikipedia. This whole incident would probably be notable enough to get a mention. Now his name can be associated with a Kennedy assasination plot and it wouldn't be libel... just the facts ma'am.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
He didn't know about the information until he stumbled upon it and saw that it was sitting like that for a total of four months. No one on Wikipedia bothered to do any fact checking on the submitted content.
If you RTFA, he did contact Wikipedia to get the content removed.
This is a completly valid criticism of Wiki style information projects. Anyone can go in, and if the article is sufficently obscure enough, get away with putting false information up because none of this stuff is common knowledge to very manu people.
The problem with people like you is that you are too emotionally tied to your little world of "open source". Instead of using valid criticism as a means of improvement, you become emotionally irrational and start cursing people out, which makes you look childish and reflects badly on the open souce/open information movements as a whole (deservedly or undeservedly so).
I think Wikipedia is a good project but the "instantaneous editing" philosophy just isn't a good idea. There should be a team of qualfied fact checkers who are experts in various fields (math, science, history, politics, etc) who review submissions/modifications for sanity.
"Does he think that this work should be someone else's responsibility? Too bad. TANSTAAFL. If you care about it, do the work. If you don't care, don't expect me to care, either."
This is a disgusting attitude that goes against everything Wikipedia stands for. Do you think that this work should be his sole responsibility? Too bad.
Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It isn't the free encyclopedia that anyone can vandalize and whose accuracy is the responsibility of article stakeholders. What should have happened is that the vandalism should have been found and removed in a timely manner.
It didn't, and thats EVERYONE's responsibility. When Wikipedians care and articles are well-written and accurate, everyone wins.
You argue that he should have fixed it himself. Ideally he would have, but your idea that it is his problem alone is ignorant. We strongly encourage participation, not require it.
You sound like someone who enjoys vandalizing articles yourself. 'Why shouldnt I? Accuracy isnt MY problem! If the information isnt fixed, why should I care?'.
I'm just thankful for the huge number of hard working Wikipedians out there who work hard, without thanks, to ensure the success of Wikipedia in the face of idiots like you.
Anyone have any questions I should ask him?
General Motors should be held responsible when somebody rear-ends me!
Remington should be held responsible when somebody gets shot!
Bose should be held responsible when people go deaf!
sigh...
His commentary also takes aim at internet providers and the laws that allow them to act as common carriers without liability for the actions of their users.
I didn't RTFA, so this is purely a response that assumes the accuracy of the poster's above assessment of the commentary:
So, if someone in a crowded park or on a crowded sidewalk shouts "In Soviet Russia, John Seigenthaler Sr was involved in the assasination of JFK!!!", the city should be liable because they provided the sidewalk or park?
Nice. Isn't the Earth liable for providing the air that the shout traveled through?
I'm starting to think he did spend a fair amount of time in Soviet Russia. It was one of the few places where they thought that providing a public forum for communication was a bad thing and tried to prevent it.
IMNSHO, attacking the people who facilitate speech and communication is the same thing as attacking communications and speech themselves, whether it's the government who's facilitating communication, or some mom and pop ISP.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Suppose Seigenthaler gets his way, and then ISPs are held accountable for the actions of their users.
1. Be some "not sufficiently notable" person who has a wikipedia article written about them.
2. Get a Bell South account
3. Change your Wikipedia article to be laibelous
4. Sue Bell South --- FINALLY, THE MISSING STEP!
5. Profit
Yeah, hold the ISP's accountable. That's a real good idea!
(I'm aiming for INSIGHTFUL, not FUNNY, and not TROLL)
From the article: I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool.
Wikipedia is not responsible for that. You must understand that Wikipedia is not trustable and accept that.
The one who trust Wikipedia as a research tool is irresponsible.
As always it is a problem of user (Wikipedia readers) education.
You'll want to read here, or perhaps more particularly here. (The first is unattributed, the second is written by a lawyer.) Or if you don't trust my sources run your own search on Findlaw or even Google.
From the second article:
Basically, if you are a public official or public figure, not only does the libel or slander have to be incorrect and damaging, you also have the burden of demonstrating that the defendant acted with malice. This is a significantly higher bar than a 'normal person' would have.
Speaking more generally, if you really think that the law applies to everyone equally regardless of circumstance, you should probably wake up and take a hard look around, because an attitude like that, while no doubt pleasant, is going to put you on a collision course with reality. Although if you're really wed to that point of view, the alternative is to think of it this way: the law applies to each person similarly, but differently depending on our circumstances. E.g., currently I have more protection against libel or slander than George Bush, but if I was the President and George was sitting here writing to you, then he'd have the protection and I wouldn't. It's not personal discrimination in that way, and like it or not, the courts and laws do it all the time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What Wikipedia, and the Web, really needs, is to rein in its motley crew of anonymous content providers, and limit the transmission of information only by those people who have vested interests and/or are part of a social elite that circle-jerks each other's senses of literary value.
Now the whole world thinks that John K. Singelthaler or whoever he is, was maybe thought by someone once to be involved with the Kennedy assassination and that he at one time lived in a foreign country. Just think of the piles of hate mail and death threats he is likely to receive by the half dozen people who wandered onto that Wikipedia article about him between May and October.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
The parent comment is a lie from the start. Wikipedia set out to be, and still claims to be a kind of encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are sources of facts. To claim otherwise is just weasel wording defend the indefensible.
By claiming to be a kind of encyclopedia, Wikipedia attracts users who don't know about the subject matter they're looking up. That is why users consult it. People don't read it to be entertained by it's errors and lies. People read it to find out information, and are reading it because they don't know enough to see the falsehoods of an article. This is what makes Wikipedia less than worthless; it makes it dangerous and dishonest.
Finally, someone like Mr. Sigenthaler shouldn't be required to constantly recheck the article to prevent some anonymous libeler from replacing the poison pen article.
... that finally the last person even tenuously connected in any way with the Kennedys has been alleged to have been implicated in the assassination.
With your proposal Wiki would read like a 'young socialists' encyclopedia (or like a young right wingers encyclopedia if I'm wrong about the demographics).
You'd need a meta moderation system like /. even then truth by voting is a bad idea. Especially on the net.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just edit the article so that it was correct?
but what a sick egocentric f**k he is to condemn the entirety of Wikipedia just because there was some corrupt text in the article about him.
Siegenthaler is a crybaby and his suggestions of suppressing free expression are downright appalling.
If he didn't like the stuff written about him, it was easy enough to change it (or have somebody change it). And those changes would have propagated to the mirrors in time.
His "whine! whine! whine!" is FUD and should be slammed down by everyone who believes in freedom.
Mr. Siegenthaler, grow a thicker skin, will ya?
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
they can go directly to the page in question and make the changes, anonymously. It's as easy as pie.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
it's an assertion by reich-wingers who don't like being called Nazis when they act like Nazis.
He should check out his entry in Uncyclopedia....
What do you suggest?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
When ever I need information off of the web, I use several source's, not just wikipedia.
Anyone that use's only one reference to back up his or her argument is an idiot. Nothing but research and alot of proof will ever convince half of the people involved they might be a bit mistaken.
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
The easy way to solve this is to stop anomymous entries - anyone that disseminates libelous information anywhere should be open to legal penalties. If you publish you should be prepared to defend your statements.
The just edit it back answer is not satisfactory. In the time the information was available people will have seen it - they may never re-read the updated information or they may not believe the update having been prejudiced by the original information.
Wikipedia is destroying itself due to complete idiots wasting the medium to slag each other off, argue pointlessly and attack other people for their political viewpoints. It is no better than the graffiti you see written on the inside of toilet stalls.
As an example look up the world cup on Wikipedia, page after page on whether it should be called the FIFA world cup, soccer world cup, football world cup or world cup, followed by pages re-analysing why the US really came third in 1936. There is no useful information at all.
My suggestion was a way of prioritising review based on peoples opinions of the person making the edit. And as someone not intent on destruction I'd welcome having my contribution looked over by someone else so I wouldn't be worried about my anonymous edits got flagged as having been done by someone with low reputation.
If that someone else want to revert my change or edit it further, then so be it. If I don't agree with it I can always come back and make further changes.
This is nothing that doesn't already happen - people already review articles and either revert changes or make new changes all the time, after all that's what Wikipedia is all about -, however today close scrutiny is mainly reserved for high profile articles that people care about and specific users that other contributors have strong feelings about.
A reputation system would go a long way to ensure "neglected" pages gets attention when someone with a low reputation have edited them - whether that low reputation is because they actively ruin pages or just because they are new -, in addition to the frequent attention that highly controversial and/or popular pages get.
One additional suggestion, though, based on your message: It would be easy enough to keep a list of the voting patterns for registered users (if they want to), and match them against each other, so that in addition to the list of edits by low reputation users, you could also get a list of edits by users that have been given a low rating by you and other users with substantially matching voting patterns.
It's a bit of number crunching, but it's simple to implement and it would make the tool more useful for someone with non-mainstream viewpoints.
It's all about creating mechanisms for automating what a lot of Wikipedia contributors already do manually: Scrutinise pages more heavily if they've been edited by someone they don't trust or know to do good work. I know if I see a lot of anyomous edits I am going to be a lot more sceptical than if I see a lot of edits by a person I know and/or respect the work of based on past experience.
At the same time I know anonymous contributions can have just as much value, so I don't want to lose them as long as they receive the scrutiny needed to weed out the junk.
This takes the cake - need I sy more?
"Former MTV veejay and podcasting entrepreneur Adam Curry appears to have been caught anonymously editing the podcasting entry on Wikipedia to remove credit from other people and inflate his role in its creation."
http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/2818
Wikipedia: A Techno-Cult of Ignorance
e x.html
Paulo Correa, M.Sc., Ph.D. Alexandra Correa, H.BA. Malgosia Askanas, Ph.D.
ISBN 1-894840-36-4
"ANTI-WIKIPEDIA
"Is Wikipedia a new fascism of knowledge perpetrated by disaffected leftists: a Wackopedia?
"The following is a manifesto against Wikipedia - against its pretensions to being encyclopedic; against its false claims of openness; against its representation of a democratic access to, and democratic enunciation of, knowledge; against its institutionalized falsification of facts; against its sordid attempts to monopolize knowledge and rewrite history by blanking out parts of our collective memory and replacing them with imprimaturs. Yes, those are all aspects of the cyberbureaucratic fraud that Wikipedia is committing wholesale upon knowledge. The fraud that consists of producing false knowledge on an encyclopedic scale. Now, that's notable about Wikipedia, if nothing else is."
http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia/awp_ind
If you wiki around in WP, you can find where it all comes from.
Why didn't John Seigenthaler just edit out the comments himself?
Woundn't it be funny if the vandal of the article turned out to be from the FBI? Especially, if it's the FBI agent who got fired mentioned in the article?
The libel is that Seigenthaler was *once suspected*. The FBI suspects EVERYONE...
-- I am A.C.
I have met John before.
I attended and graduated from MTSU's Mass Communication Recording Industry department. He was there often.
He is a BIGTIME liberal. Good friends with Al Gore (who was also at my school often) and tends to share a lot of the same ideas including a major lack of understanding about technology.
I would wager that almost anything this guy does and says is an attempt to forward his own liberal agenda.
Me? I'm a libertarian.
Libertas in infinitum
WikiPedia's content in places is plainly wrong, and in a good few cases copied with out modification from other websites, and in some cases direct from established print publications. One can only assume people get off by creating new terms simply by copying text from others.
WikiPedia needs to rate its content providers in much the same way that others such as ebay attempt to rate the providers of goods and services.
WikiPedia is close to being an urban myth in places. Entire new areas of fake technology and science spew from its dubious definitions. But don't worry, its all in good GNU copyleft/right/up/down/fake way.
If I was to bet, i'd would not be suprised to see adverts creaping into WikiPedia. Just add something like Google's Adsense and the WikiPedia owners will be rich beyond all fake dreams.
Its time to review if all thats free is good... Or free from sence and peer review.
Maybe i'm missing something but when i edit a wikipedia entry i don't see the ip address of other editors. So the Question becomes how did Brandt get the ip address to even trace this? So this Gentleman was working with Wikipedia? If not either i'm missing somehing about wikipedia or this information was obtained illegally? Just trying to make sense of something that doesn't look right.