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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."
If you disagree with it, just edit it! No need to get all indignant.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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supposedly a reliable encyclopedia
Supposed by whom? Wikipedia is at best a starting point for information on anything of any importance. Fortunately most articles tend to cite their references, so you can go and check on facts relatively easily.
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
Why is that a problem?
Yes, so when I write an expose' in your local paper alleging your repeated involvement in group orgies with preschoolers, I'm sure you'll be happy I have the right to commit libel.
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.
Good point.
As for living in the Soviet Union - I assume he didn't. Even so, lying about where he lived does not constitute libel.
However I can understand his unhappiness at the situation. Futhermore it is not his responsibility to go and edit the article. Why should he repair damage caused by others?
I think Wikipedia is going to be in the crossfire increasingly since it is not easy to stop malicious content in a very short time.
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
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.
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!
No worries, that's not even slander; the truth is an absolute defense.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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
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.
Oh wait. I suppose he could just make the edits himself:
401 - Attention span not found
History is but a thin veil of agreed upon lie...write that down. By definition Wikipedia provides a revisionist view of history (not sure if their EULA says that or not). Wiki is a great resource, don't get me wrong, but it must be taken for what it is. Just because I have knowledge about a subject doesn't make me an expert. If you're looking for an encyclopedia, try Britannica (but who's to say they don't spin as they see fit...they just happen to have a longer track record.). If you're looking for a collection of work a diverse group of people, Wiki is the way to go.
This sig has been removed pending an investigation.
"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.
Does anyone else find it ironic that a guy who has the "John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies" named after him is complaining about the government protecting peoples right to free speach and press? Both sides are guilty of this but it always dismays me when there's another example of "that right doesn't apply to you unless you act right" or worse yet "...agree with me".
This dude isn't Bush, Hitler or God, he's just some old man. I know I never heard of him, maybe he's well known in the USA, but the world is full of old men who used to be famous. Not every article about such men on Wikipedia contains such inflammatory accusations. Somebody had to put them there - the question is, why?
I suspect, given the attitude displayed in the article, that he's annoyed a lot of people in the past. One of them found wikipedia and presumably couldn't help themselves ...
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!
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
And he is correct to do so. The fact that WikiPedia can be used in such a manner, terribly diminishes the worth of WikiPedia's articles. How do you know an article that is based on fact vs. an article that is based on vindictiveness?
WikiPedia is a great concept, but it needs to grow up before it can earn the place in society that so many ascribe to it now. Part of that growing up process will be accountability of its authors and responsibility to its readers.
Libel law is as well known and accepted an exception to free speech as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. His complaint is that it is unenforceable on Wikipedia.
...Or any of the math articles, or most of the science articles, or anything people actually looked at, or etc. etc. etc.. Vandalism like this is limited to things that no one cares about, and this guy fits squarely in that category.
Would be interesting to see the page hits for the article; it'd be kind of disheartening to see that more people looked up, say, Lebesgue Integration on any given day than you in 4 months.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
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.
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.
"Revisionism" is typically reserved for historical accounts which are meant to conform to a particular political dogma or, more rarely, to be self-serving, where those motives override the goal of "accuracy", whatever that means.
Simply inaccurate bullsh*t or libel doesn't count.
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.
The fact that WikiPedia can be used in such a manner, terribly diminishes the worth of WikiPedia's articles.
Ah yes, apply your priceless logic to any system of communication and you will find that the more valuable they are, the more ways they can be abused. Email has spam, phones have obscene calls from the pay phone on the corner, the message board at the corner store can be so disorganized that you'll never see that lost cat notice and be a hero for a day.
These forms of communication are so popular because of their value which far exceeds their inadequacies. You can tinker around the edges, but to put forward greater restrictions on their use and to try to impose too many controls would be to destroy their value not improve it.
How do you know an article that is based on fact vs. an article that is based on vindictiveness?
The same way you do in any other context, cross referencing the stated facts. The same way you know when the New York Time says that US Warplanes bombed a wedding party shooting into the sky in celebration, and the US Department of Defense Spokesman says that US warplanes attacked a terrorist camp in Western Iraq. Or when the Iran government says that it is developing Peaceful nuclear technology and the US government says that Iran is going to build bombs. Or when one guy says that Global Warming is manmade and another says it is not. Referencing one source of information for all your facts may have been okay in 3rd grade, but it doesn't fly in real life.
Wikipedia is great simply because it puts those discrepancies in your face and allows anyone to weigh in. And by keeping a full history of revisions that can be viewed, reverted to or merged, we can dig a little deeper right there on the article to see how it got put together. Wikipedia has bones.
WikiPedia is a great concept, but it needs to grow up before it can earn the place in society that so many ascribe to it now. Part of that growing up process will be accountability of its authors and responsibility to its readers.
No, you need to grow up. Seriously. What exactly constitutes accountability to you? You want to make sure that all the writers are in the Guild? Want everyone who has something to say to buy writers insurance, and relax libel laws so that we can't write anything bad about anyone without getting sued?
You can't say it is a great idea and then attack its premise.
If you don't like wikipedia's lack of a meaningful hierarchy of privilege to edit content, then go out and make your own with your own system of trust. You can even take their content to start and let the market decide which content becomes more valuable to them over time.
Despite what you say, Wikipedia has earned a certain level of respect in society in a remarkably short amount of time and you would be hard pressed to make any truly constructive suggestions which would substantially change the model of openness that they follow.
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...
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.
Perhaps we should also consider the difference between a historical text and a factual text. Unfortunately, an "encyclopedia" blurs the line, as history should be factually based.
One can use Wikipedia for things like information on physics, chemistry, biology, and other sciences, books, television shows, etc., etc.
Unfortunately, in this instance/entry, history is open to interpretation/revision, and so may not be entirely provable or factual. Wikipedia walks a dangerous line in some instances, and while it's hard to fault the website (rather, I am in awe of the community effort) every entry must be taken with that proverbial grain of salt.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
I like Wikipeadia, and sometimes go to it for a quick overview, after which I immediately go to other sites to try and verify what it said. It's usally as accurate as a guy at a bar. 80% right on the big stuff, 20% right on the details, with occaisional giant whoppers here and there.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
This will only make Wikipedia even worse!
/think/ they know the fact better, but in truth don't, from completely sinking an entry with misinformation.
/. as a negative example, but the group-think and "common wisdom" that is enforced by the moderation system here is scarey at times. Modding does eliminate the bottom rung of true trolls, but it also ends up moderating down an awful lot of people with discenting opinions, no matter how factual or correct they may be.
Moderation reinforces group-think which is the Wiki's main problem to begin with.
Pretty soon you'll have a database of "facts" that conform only to how people want to perceive them. Not based on any actual validation for correctness.
"Facts" are generally known to an astonishingly small number of people. Not that there are only 5 people that know anything in the world of course. Each person in the world probably knows one fact really well. But that doesn't stop 5000 others that
Group-think already wins the day at Wiki now, but a moderation system will only make it worse. I hate to use
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
"WikiPedia is a great concept, but it needs to grow up before it can earn the place in society that so many ascribe to it now. Part of that growing up process will be accountability of its authors and responsibility to its readers."
While I agree the potential for abuse is there, the potential for abuse and censorship by the "official" maintainers of what is historically true and what is not is also subject to abuse, bias and outright lies. History is just as much lies and mythmaking as it is 'historical fact', history and facts about many things is not something you can easily pin down because of how abstracted history is from the individual mind. Some things are easy to record historically other things are not because of censorship by those that rule and own over those who do not.
I think this is wikipedia's most powerful thing, if somebody knows something factual abou someone it will be subject to scrutiny before it is censored and if it is censored there will be a record of it. People who buy 'official' history are just as worthy of scrutiny IMHO, in many things you're never told the whole story.