Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

John Seigenthaler Sr. Criticises Wikipedia

Posted by samzenpus on from the everything-on-the-internet-is-true dept.

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."

3 of 672 comments (clear)

  1. What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    no link to the article?

  2. From Wikipedia by bdesham · · Score: 4, Informative
    On November 29, 2005, Seigenthaler wrote an op-ed in USA Today discussing his biography on Wikipedia. The article had contained incorrect statements between May and September of that year, including allegations which he considered "character assassination." The statements, which had been inserted anonymously, had been removed by the time he wrote the article.
    link. (Emphasis mine.)
    --
    Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
  3. Re:why no moderation by jacoplane · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    Actually, a new feature called article validation is about to go live on wikipedia. See the article from this week's signpost. The feature will hopefully help adress some of the issues being raised in this story.


    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.

    Yeah, so? Jimmy Wales:"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." ... That includes obscure topics like video games that you might not care about.