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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?
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."
Actually when the case is libel, he doesn't have to merely put up with it or change it. Having said that, I disagree with his claim that content hosts should be held responsible for what users (or customers) place on their content. If they're made aware of it, then I can see an argument being made, but to have to screen every single post/change/webpage would be infeasible.
"It smells authoritative and is treated that way by too many people."
Sortof like most our media, in fact, like most information we're ever exposed to that we cannot independently verify ourselves?
"The only cure is for smart people who know better to cite better, direct information"
The only cure is for smart people who know better to cite multiple independent sources of information. As long as you use a single source you're always vulnerable to disinformation.
And the only way we will be able to cite those multiple independent information sources is if some segments of the academic community gets over itself and commits to freely publishing its research and papers; otherwise Wikipedia will end up being the 'authoritative' source by default.
I'm not saying I agree completely with his position, but just saying how I parsed his column.
More than mere navel gazing.
This seems to be a pretty stock response. It's one of those issues that makes me think the average Slashdot geek doesn't have much knowledge of human nature (not to mention law).
Accusing people of involvement in the murder of their friends will make people extremely angry, angry in a way many of the lamers here just don't seem to understand. "Indignant" doesn't begin to cover it.
He's an intelligent enough man to recognize libel. Contrary to popular belief here on Slashdot, nothing about the First Amendment requires him to ignore that. Why would he?
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Someone comes along and enters something illegal: how to be a sniper
It's illegal to disseminate information that doesn't infringe on someone's privacy, isn't untrue and doesn't break copyright laws? Wow. Talk about the land of the free.
slander or liber about a certain person,
I doubt many (if any) wiki's support sound so including slander really isn't possbile.
excerpts from a book against copyright,
I'm a bit confused what "against copyright" means, but copyright laws in America allow excerpts to be displayed.
"Change it yourself" is like saying "if skinheads painted Nazi slogans on your house wall, just repaint it".
A good enough analogy for the point you were making. I agree. I also never said "change it yourself."
Nobody should be pursued for this?
Not at all. The person who made the libelous changes should be persued. I said Wikipedia itself shouldn't be persued, unless it has been made aware of the content and has done nothing to change it.
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?
That I am. Although to say it is "above the law" is dishonest at best. It isn't above the law, the laws merely say it can't be held responsible unless it doesn't fulfill the requirements outlined in a cease and desist order, which by the way, wasn't necessary in this instance. I think it would be ridiculous to say all content hosts should be held responsible for any information I post on their website. If I said something libelous, I don't believe slashdot should be held responsible. Same thing with me going on live television. The television studio shouldn't be held responsible.
And the person can be tracked down. If the article writer had wished to persue the matter legally, then Bellsouth would have provided the information he asked for. However even if he couldn't be tracked down, to blame someone else merely because the the person can't be caught is ridiculous.
Because a wiki is not a discussion. It's supposed to be reference.
No, wiki software can be used for anything. Wikipedia is meant as a reference, not a discussion.
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.
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.