Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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?
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.
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.
... That includes obscure topics like video games that you might not care about.
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."
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
I knew someone was going to say that.
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.
Meanwhile, you have the right to commit libel, as I have the right to sue you for it, if I can prove that you said it. Seigenthaler has the same option. What he is advocating is prior restraint.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
Actually, the Vanity rule (I believe) would stop him from editing his own article.
Also, he's only using Wikipedia as an example of the current legal status of online content providers and the protections private citizens have. It isn't really about Wikipedia at all.
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?
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
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.
That's what Wikipedia says about him, anyway.
Would preventing anonymous contributions solve the problem? What is the benefit of allowing anonymity in this particular context? (just asking, don't flame :-) )
"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
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.
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
"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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.