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Wikipedia Hoax Author Confesses
cmholm writes "As reported in The Seattle Times, Nashville resident Brian Chase has publically admitted that he edited a Wikipedia entry for John Seigenthaler, making appear that Mr. Seigenthaler was involved in the assassination of JFK. Mr. Chase fessed up after a cyber-sleuth tracked down the business from which he had posted to Wikipedia."
Wait...so, that was illegal?
Has Wikipedia been a solid information resource? It shouldn't be taken THAT seriously...
Here's his wiki entry.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The guy did a whois on the IP address and he's made to sound like a regular Sherlock Holmes.
12:50 - press return.
Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center, said that as a longtime advocate of free speech, he found it awkward to be tracking down someone who had exercised that right. "I still believe in free expression," he said. "What I want is accountability."
Indeed.
The problem is that many people believe that actions - including speech - shouldn't have consequences.
They really need to go after that guy who started that story about the guy who wakes up in a tub of ice without kidneys. That was too creepy. And that Kilroy guy has lied out his ass millions of times. Where exactly is "here?" No one seems to know. Let's hang him.
In a shocking discovery, it appears that the Wikipedia entry came from the sixth floor of the Dallas book repository.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/About a year ago, I posted a discussion to some part of Wikipedia advocating digitally signing articles with GPG keys.
The plan was that each author, editor, and reader signs off for or against part or the whole of an article. The fallout should be that some articles get nearly universal positive sign offs, some get nearly universal against votes, and some are recorded as controversial. With GPG keys, we can also start ranking authors and editors -- are they generally agreed with, are they controversial, are they trolls. This is a codification of the skepticism that proponents of Wikipedia claim that any internet user should employ.
Something else I thought would be good would be to have branching articles. For instance, the entry for Hitler would have the main entry, which is the most agreed upon, a white-supremacist/neo-nazi version which stirs a lot of controversy, and maybe a David Icke version, which, while against Hitler, involves space reptiles and is therefore also controversial. Using the ranking and reputation system, a casual user can see how agreeable or controversial an article is.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I know, because I was a reporter, then later an editor. With tightening margins, reporters get paid less and less (try $20 for a story), and staff is shrunk in the dead-tree press. It's hard to keep the passion up when Ramen is for dinner, again. Sometimes, though, the made up news is more interesting or entertaining than the 'real' news.
Alaska's wildfires might be helping melt glaciers and sea ice
But the thing this time was a bit different as the page in question was not linked from anywhere else, thus it was not spotted and fixed by anyone else until the stink arose.
What tool did he use to trace the IP back to the delivery company?
ARIN Whois only goes as far as Bellsouth for the IP address in question (65.81.97.208), as does pretty much every utility, geographic and otherwise, that I could find in a rudimentary search.
So, what tool did he use to actually narrow it down to a specific business?
this article has been created today about 3 hours ago. I bet that some of /. are feeling the urge to further modify it. Perhaps to make it more fun, or sth (eg. to write that the hoaxer killed JFK himself). Ello guys, it's not how the wikipedia is intended to work.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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The issue was resolved amicably, and the "investigator" found him by his IP address. So uh what's the problem?
I love how people who say there's no way to track someone down because of privacy laws and there's no accountability, yet these people don't understand the IP protocol, which allows for just that.
Everyone has an IP address, and IP addresses can be tracked down to ISPs. ISPs provide these connections, and although they're not liable, their users agree to avoid illegal activity (like defamation)... so again, what's the problem?
Of course the last piece of the puzzle is proving illegal activity, which can usually be done in logs.
FLR
I've got to love a post where someone says to look up "slander", and they never actually looked up "slander".
You crack me up, dude.
Slander
1 : the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation
2 : a false and defamatory oral statement about a person -- compare libel
-slan£der£ous \-d(-)rs\ adjective
-slan£der£ous£ly adverb
-slan£der£ous£ness noun
(from Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary)
Perhaps you meant libel?
Again from Merriams...
Main Entry: 1li£bel
Pronunciation: l-bl
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, written declaration, from Middle French, from Latin libellus, diminutive of liber book
Date: 14th century
Libel
1 a : a written statement in which a plaintiff in certain courts sets forth the cause of action or the relief sought b archaic : a handbill especially attacking or defaming someone
2 a : a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression b(1) : a statement or representation published without just cause and tending to expose another to public contempt (2) : defamation of a person by written or representational means (3) : the publication of blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene writings or pictures (4) : the act, tort, or crime of publishing such a libel
If Mr. Chase had spent the 30 seconds or required to create a Wikipedia account (valid email address not required!) he would have stopped the "cyber-sleuth" (hah) in his tracks. Wikipedia seems to laboring under the apprehension that IP addresses are somehow anonymous, whereas they provide far more information to third parties than an account name does (unless the poster is savvy enough to use a reasonably anonymous proxy not blocked by Wikipedia).
All from my car while waiting at the local MacDonalds drive-thru.
How exactly is anyone going to hold me accountable for what I say online?
We've recently issued free personal printing presses and the potential for efficient, unlimited redistribution to the population of the entire world. We may need to reevaluate a few things about how we treat information.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
In this respect Wikipedia is actually far more effient than any search engine, because ALL links will point to pages with information on the subject - filtering between 'good' and 'bad' webpages is quite straight forward. This approach will also give you a layer of redundancy which is required when doing good research on any topic.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Slashdot seems to do reasonably well without GPG keys.
I wonder if anonymity is just a passing phase for the Internet? A way to envision having a real network identity could the upbeat notion of a Citizen's card that allows you to participate virtually within the boundaries of accepted behavior. With wise regulation there's nothing bad about that.
But outside of that ideal in the real world we can hardly agree on what even constitutes human rights internationally. So there does seem to be a need for some forms of anonymity like when something is leaked because it's in the public interest. Although, for libel and slander accountability would seem to be better overall. Pragmatically, something that satisfies both could be logged access that requires a warrant to associate id with identity.
Shh.
If you are trying to convince me that Wikipedia is not credible, you probably shouldn't be using a "Wikipedia sucks" page.
Maybe I'm dense, but I fail to see how cryptographic digital sigures would do anything other than add technical complexity with no corresponding benefit. How exactly are GPG signatures better than user accounts with decent passwords? Is there really a history of Wikipedia accounts being compromised by password guessing? Is there any reason to think that password guessing would become a problem if some sort of article approval process were implemented?
I just don't see it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
While I agree that, on the surface, this seems like it shouldn't be illegal, if this where beleived it could cost Mr. Seigenthaler career opportunities. And, though unlikely, potentially even legal problems.
My main dissapointment here, however, is that this will decrease the trust of the value of the information on Wikipedia. I have a few friends (these are geeks as well mind you) who don't trust Wikipedia because essentially, 'anyone can write there'. They beleive that there is not enough valid information there; Too much opinion. Of course my response is that even published encyclopedias can include bad information based on opinion. By giving a published encyclopedia no room for doubt we are opening ourselves up to beleif in error, just as we are by not using critical thought processes when reading a Wikipedia entry.
So back to my dissapointment. Stunts like this while both funny & stupid are also devaluing the otherwise fairly valuable content of Wikipedia.
-ME®
Mr. Seigenthaler was involved in the assasination of JFK.
Assassination
n.
The act of assassinating; a killing by treacherous violence.
Assasination
n.
The act of writing a Wikipedia article with the purpose to insert the author into the topic falsely.
See, he's fine.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Funny how effective that was... and then Mr. Free Speech has the audacity to ask the employer to hire the guy back. ROFL!!!
1) use TOR,
2) use I2P,
3) use an open/free Wifi area (without camera mind you), or
4) in the works of Lawerence Lessig (if any of you went to law school): "use a pay phone." (and yes this is possible if you have some old school gear and the patience to wait on the modem)
While allowing accountability (IP request w/o subpoenas) would catch the majority of people on the internet, allowing cases for libel, any truly subversive or "alternative" group would understand how to avoid detection. Misinformation will always be available, anonymity existed way before the Internet become a popular tool, and no matter how many hoops you add those who want to remain unknown will.\
In the end maybe I support the proposed legal change, because it would increase the popularity of tools like TOR and I2P.
Cheers,
TdC
My first first-post (except for one AC), and now sadly invisible...
Indeed, Wikipedia is not credible.
It's common knowledge that Kennedy was killed by the CIA, the Mafia, LBJ, the Teamsters, and the Freemasons, among others.
And that's totally not untrue because it's in a newspaper!
If it makes you feel better, you missed FP by about a minute.
It used to be that one could tell the fake news, such as Weekly World News, National Enquirer, etc.
Most of the tabloids, such as The National Enquirer, have switched to a celebrity gossip format. Weekly World News, on the other hand, still gives general interest news that is false in this world but true in the Weekly World.
So this guy made some amendments to an article to find out how easy it is to 'fool' wikipedians. There must be thousands that have done that already, mostly known as vandalism. Now this whole hoopla has drawn the attention of million more cowboys to wikipedia. Some of them want to verify themselves that they too can write in wikipedia. Most will be caugth as simple vandalism (most peaple are not very smart mischieving) but som ewill fall though the cracks unnoticed. That percentage might even be bigger that the extra articles this new readership write.
So readership increases, amout of articles increases, but and the signal/noise ratio decreases rapidly. Smarter people are more likely to notice this increase and will turn away from it. So in the end, Wikipedia will be read (&written) by more less intelligent people.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
seems excessive.
When the "'Rican Warriors" wiped out "Fat Tony" and squatted on his turf, they knew they were going to be in shit but they figured the noise would die down eventually and things would quiet down.
The funny thing is that "Possession is nine tenth of the law" in the underworld too. Its just harder to retain.
But what they hadn't figured on was getting the heat involved. 'Fat Tony"'s brother-in-law came down on them and it was a vendetta.
He eventually killed ALL of the leadership in drive-by shootings and then he went after their families too.
See "Fat Tony"'s sister had married a "White-Jamaican" and these guys give a whole new meaning to the word "reprisal".
Man, woman and child out to two degrees of separation were marked for murder.
These guys don't stop while there's a breath of life left in anybody who could give 'em grief.
The end result is there's a crater where the "'rican Warriors" turf used to be, that includes the dealers, the hanger's on and some of the clientelle.
You don't wanna fuck with the "White Jamaicans".
The guy did this as a prank, and then he left it there for months?? Either he's extremely forgetful, or he doesn't know when to end a prank, or this wasn't a prank at all and he's just covering his ass.
Well I lol'd
Now we know who wrote it. However, we'll probably never know whether anybody ever read it before Seigenthaler noticed it. If you look at the "what links here" page for the Seigenthaler article, it looks like 100% of the list is articles that are now linked to it because of the controversy. During the time between the perpetration of the hoax and Seigenthaler publicizing of it, it's quite possible that the article wasn't linked to from anywhere in WP, and nobody had ever read it besides Seigenthaler. After all, he's a pretty obscure person in the greater scheme of things. If Seigenthaler had wanted to sue for libel, it would have been tough, because there's no evidence anyone ever read it. If I go in the closet and whisper to myself, "Seigenthaler shot Kennedy," it doesn't exactly qualify as slander. If the hoaxer had wanted people to read the hoax, he could have linked to it from the Kennedy article, for example. But then guess what? -- people would have corrected the hoax.
Find free books.
How did this guy track down the poster? Unless he was able to get informatino from wikipedia? I don't see a way to display posters ip adresses.. Maybe i'm missing something about the service.
pla;
You have a very strong position here and I wanted to let you know that I found your statements on freedom of speech very compelling. The responsibility for freedom of speech is indeed on the part of the audience, and not the orator. Each human being is a liar once; nobody is perfect. Our mission is not to be perfect; it's to handle and understand why we are NOT perfect. When we can achieve that level of understanding, we can become truly evolved and perhaps then we could be within reach of the lofty utopian goals discovered and idolized by our ancestors. The guy who pranked Wikipedia did it as a joke... but people found out who he was because in American society, slander is punishable regardless of the medium. The thing is -- there is no slander on Wikipedia because it's impossible to prove that it's a reliable source of information -- anyone can edit any article, so there must be a high level of speculation on any post.
The purpose of Wikipedia is to have a launch pad for information... not actually keep it locked down as factual. Think something? Post it. Someone will either edit it or not. If they find something they want to add, let them. The end product is a plethora of great info that should be double-checked before it's used for anything imporant. Fact checking is required when citing Wikipedia in any kind of formal essay. It's a great place to START an essay, but it's a lousy reference. Therefore even if Seigenthaler wanted to sue Chase (and Seig] has announced he does *not* want to do so because Seig] believes in freedom of speech), Seig] couldn't win.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
There is a chronology of how it was traced at the bottom of this page.
I am no genius. There was one chance in 10,000 that there would be a server on that IP address, and that it would be up when I tried it on impulse (it timed out during nightime hours during all of last week).
Mr. Seigenthaler is very gracious in complimenting me, but I am no genius. Anyone who knows the difference between an IP address and a hot-dog with mustard could have done the same thing. That includes dozens, or maybe hundreds, of Wikipedians. But they didn't bother now, did they?
It was a pleasure to work with Mr. Seigenthaler on this trace. He is an amazing, accomplished person, and I have a huge amount of respect for him. Before his Wikipedia story came out, I wasn't aware of him.
He's the genius, although it is true that I know more about Internet infrastructure than he does. But I know nothing that would impress all the clever Slashdotters reading this, I'm sure.
A new version takes years to come out and will have a lot of peer review and can be reviewed just once by the rest of the world and then either accepted or rejected. You do not have to keep a constant watch to check if some crackpot is not scribbling new entries in your encyclopedia and if they are you send your kid to bed without diner.
Then again all the safety measures also tend to enforce a certain accepted thinking approach with no room for the more wild theories and ideas. I wonder if a wikipedia article in centuries past on the arrangeent of the heavenly bodies would have been a problem.
After all I seem to conclude that the holocaust is real but how do I know? Only because that is what I have been told. Just like people were once told that the sun circled the earth. For both of wich I got no absolute proof. I don't even have proof WW2 really happened. Oh sure yeah there is a very big war cemetry were I grew up but who says they are real graves?
That is the problem with the "true" version of an event not directly experienced by you. You got to take somebody's word for it and somehow I am not that willing to take the word of someone unwilling to show his/hers full credentials. Wikipedia is usefull but only for totally non-discussable things like say looking up what that the name NASA is an acronym (forgot the word a while ago).
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
IS it just me, or does this sound as pointless as an article out of The Onion. "Man Posts False Information on the Internet" Now theres a shock...
No kidding. I poked around this page a bit. It appears to be highly focused on the TOH and Sollag. A critical thinker might even suspect that the whole site is based on Sollag and his battle against Wikipedia. Hardly an objective resource outlining the problems with Wikipedia.
It was the fonts used that gave it away. You see, that particular font was not widely available on PC-104 keyboards at the time. Thus, either the article had to have been written on one of only a few special keyboards, which was unlikely; or the article was in fact a forgery. QED: the article was a forgery.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
this is one of the smartest things i have ever heard on slashdot. of course the concept can be over-generalized/taken to extremes, but in the case of communication on a large scale i think it makes total sense. what happened to us thinking for ourselves? when did we start wanting someone to hold our hand and tell us what is okay to believe and what isn't? we *do* all need to be paying attention, and being sceptical.
"Publish and be damned!"
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I don't know when it applies, but can't the author be sued for libel (not Wikipedia)? If ISPs can't be held liable for the content of their service (which makes sense) then why should Wikipedia? Wikipedia certainly doesn't at any point guarantee accuracy. Most of us love Wikipedia but it is important to remember that it is basically always a beta product. I use it as or more frequently as Google, but if it isn't just to satisfy my curiosity (i.e. school paper) I always cross-check my facts from all of my sources.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
The hoaxer pointed readers to the article to shock the friends of its victim. He worked entirely outside the Wikipedia and its internal controls.
There are reasons why the Brittanica has survived for over 200 years. Nothing in the EB gets into print without real editorial review.
Hm, let's make somethin up...
OJ Simpson had a part in not only his wife's murder, but JFK's.
What, I'm now exposing myself to have charges brought against me now? Doubt it.
Our justice system is fucked if this guy has any charges brought against him.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I'm trying to remember any source of information that is 'reliable' in any sense of the word. For instance, this was direct sabotage - which has happened in most information sources from one time to another, whether it be through scientific fraud, or fiat of the School Board of Kansas. Or Inadvertent errors - which happen all the time in instruments as prestigious as The Encyclopedia Brittannica and The New York Times (see errata, both publications).
In what sense of the word 'reliable' do you feel that Wikipedia is not, but some other souce is?
Thinking outside my Head
I can't believe this guy gave up his job over this! So what if he did what he did? Where did he break the law? Where did he do something that isn't done thousands of times a day, probably, by others? I see the moral issue, duplicity, but its a relatively mild one, and its not cause for dismissal or resignation.
Someone needs to sue Wikipedia for libel. I know there are a lot of good people contributing to Wikipedia, but the facists there have taken over and ruined it. Brandt is right... there needs to be accountability, and furthermore, some better decision-making process where not just the online bullies get their way because they feel strongly about something.
As a direct result of the creation of Wikipedia Watch, Brandt was banned indefinitely from Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is fascist. I've never seen from where they get any credibility whatsoever.
The Admin and the Engineer
Also, his grave was opened and his remains were poked and shot by Mr Jerusalem, who in later interrogations admitted that he "just wanted to make sure he was really dead".
Anybody who takes information that isn't substantiated by verifiable background information as truth is a fool; it doesn't matter whether it's on Wikipedia or anywhere else.
As for Seigenthaler, I can understand his desire to track down the origin of this posting (it might have been a political smear campaign).
However, I think Seigenthaler has hurt himself pretty badly with his behavior. From someone who claims to be a staunch defender of first amendment rights, I do not expect his first reaction to be to publicly attack Wikipedia and rail against anonymous speech. He should have acted more prudently and cautiously.
nT
That's why you ppl need dialup, you canly watch so many movies about monkeys sticking their finger in their butt or parody songs, or hell, hollywood blockbusters for that matter. /this/ should be interesting.
You'll be wanting the text internet back one day with the dynamic constantly changing ip and tight code. Which reminds me, I need to go to theproduct.de and see how that demo works on my machine - I got XP now on my other partition! XP + dialup is usually pretty boring, but
Wait, so Chase killed JFK?
PS - I tried to give Brian Chase the nickname "Herostratus" in wikipedia, but they corrected it in under five seconds. The great anarcho-democratic encyclopedia is dead.
This just in: Unfiltered forums of data are found to contain factual, false, and imaginary information. WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?!!
-AC
Hey I was with you up until the American Jews part -- shouldn't you disclose your religion, ethnic affiliation and all your political views so we can evaluate your comments in context? Or would that make you whine, too?
If you're going to pick on someone's religion or ethnicity, at least be like Bill O'Reilly and let us see yours.
Clearly, not all Slashdotters are as hypocritical as you make them out to be. Many moderators are willing to give pro-Microsoft, anti-stuffpopularonslashdot ideas mod points, as long as they are interesting and well thought out. It just so happens that, because certain ideas are more popular, that 1) Linux, etc are praised more often and modded up, and 2) The frequency of high-quality posts on Linux, etc. is higher than with the others.
And THEN you have the asshole moderators. That the GP got modded up is proof that there are conscientious mods who counter-modded the idiot who modded it down.
So please stop accusing the mass of Slashdotters of hypocrisy. You're treating a crowd as an individual and criticising its aggregate of viewpoints. If that isn't hypocritical, I don't know what is.
Actually, since it's ridiculous to claim that saying someone assassinated JFK could lead to monetary damages, wouldn't it be "neither"?
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
I'm Jewish.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Here's my take:
He did it as a joke. He thought it was inconsequential. He wasn't trying to construct some elaborate consipiracy to implicate the other guy for the assassination. He was basically doing the equivalent of changing the screensaver on computers at Best Buy to say "SpideyCT is cool". It is funny to be able to do something so simple, and because it reaches such a large audience, looks like you did something special.
So yeah, he could have covered his tracks better, but I bet it never occurred to him to try. Why would it? In fact, if he had tried to cover it up more, it would have looked like he was trying to cover it up, suggesting that he thought he was doing something he could get in trouble for.
"With rights come responsibilities. They are intrinsically linked and inseparable. The problems come when people believe there is, or should be, no relationship between them."
Damn straight. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some music to download before my friend's mother gets home.
If you're serious about looking something up, Wikipedia is an excellent starting point. That's all.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
... will evolve faster and faster despite quality issues. But it requires a reasonable and critical approach to its content. The Weblinks are a useful "second opinion" and better than the search results of google and Co. today. In adition intelligent search interfaces such as http://wiki.lumrix.net/en provide cross checking (validation) of certain topics in different languages. Precondition: Little foreign language competence!
The problem is that many people believe that actions - including speech - shouldn't have consequences.
Freedom of speech, by necessity, includes freedom after speech. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity.
Let's see what happens with that claim if applied to other rights:
"Freedom of religion, by necessity, includes freedom after sacrificing a captured non-believer. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
"Freedom of the press, by necessity, includes freedom after deliberatiely publishing libelous stories that destroy a victim's livelyhood, family, and personal relations. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
"The right to keep and bear arms, by necessity, includes freedom after fatally shooting unamred victims in the back. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
"Freedom of association, by necessity, includes freedom after creating a criminal gang and leading in an ongoing pattern of criminal activity, including murders, robberies, and extortion. In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
And so on.
Sorry, the only true part of your claim is that: "In the real world, that usually requires anonymity."
Freedom of speech says the government can't make a law blocking you from speeking. It does not mean it can't make it a crime to deliberately or negligently cause harm others using false claims (that you KNOW to be false) as the instrument.
If, instead, the relevant Wiki article had included concrete evidence that Bush and Blair lied to the world for the purpose of controlling the world Mango market, or a leaked internal memo showing the Diebold CEO deliberately made defective machines that gave extra votes to Libertarians - Would we still consider it an "abuse" of free speech, or exactly the reason we need free speech?
IANAL, but as I understand it:
- Truth is an absolute defense against claims of libel.
- The standard to prove libel is higher for "public persons", such as celebrities (who voluntarily chose to make their living from their noteriety) or politicians, than for ordinary citizens. (In particular (if I have this right), negligence is no longer an issue and the plantif must show malace and/or deliberate falsehood.)
- The standards are essentially insurmountable when discussing elected officials or political issues. (Thus pundits, and political opponents, can take cheap shots, repeat outrageous and provable lies for years, or accuse their opponents of their own (but not their opponents) sins, in complete immunity. The effectively only need to answer to the "court of public opinion", not to a court of law.)
Yes, with free speech comes a certain degree of responsibility... On the part of the AUDIENCE. Charlatans and outright liers will always exist, and would even if we didn't have a 1st amendment in the US. Anyone who accepts a single Wiki entry as "proof" of ANYTHING deserves the ridicule they get when more skeptical readers point out the real facts.
The same can be said of the news media, commercial encyclopedias, printed books, scholarly journals, and every human being whose opinions and stories you pay attention to. Different institutions and different individuals deserve different levels of trust. Even the SAME individual or institution deserves different levels of trust on different subjects (or even at different times in their lifetime or history).
If you have a medical question, do you trust your doctor, your lawyer, the head of your IT department, or your auto mechanic when their opinions diverge? If you have a question regarding risk-benefit ratio of gun ownership, do you trust articles in a medical or a criminology journal when THEY diverge? And so on.
But that in no way absoves the author or speaker of THEIR responsibility - especially when they deliberatly construct and publish falsehoods that harm some particular victim.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"As we move towards community wireless mesh networks, traceability will become even harder. There'll be an incentive to run an open access point, because everyone in the community depends on others to do the same thing."
Um, no. Abuse of a resource (community or otherwise) simply is an incentive to place more controls, and failing that, discontinue the service. The thing that everyone's forgetting is that all these services are a privilege. Not a right.* If a city or other organization has a free WiFi service in place, is because they think there's a benefit for themselves and others. AS LONG AS THE ABUSE (if any) ISN'T A DETRIMENT TO THEM!(1) That's why I tell people to put as much pressure as they can on those who abuse the society they exist in. The abusers obviously don't give a damn about you, so why defend them on slashdot, or elsewere?
*Much as OSS would breakdown under the pressure from widespread abuse of it's goodness. Hence the strength of the GPL.
(1) Which is another way of saying that a society can tolerate a certain amount of disruption, before problems manifest themselves.
Ideas and opinions, whether true of[sic] false, cannot constitutionally be subject to libel claims.
Frankly, I haven't been thinking about the issue for long enough to come to a proper decision. Perhaps it's because Something Awful is big and popular enough to get away with it, but weren't they doing it when they were small and vulnerable? I can remember a particularly controversial case when they insulted the mothers of stillborn children (don't worry, no pictures anymore).
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
You people don't whine half as much as the niggers do. "RACISM! RACISM!!!" every time they don't get their way, even for the most non-racist reasons.
With rights come responsibilities. They are intrinsically linked and inseparable. The problems come when people believe there is, or should be, no relationship between them.
Very close, but no cigar.
Responsibilities come with ACTIONS (including incactions) and the CHOICES to commit them.
They come with what you DID with your ABILITIES, regardless of whether you had the abilities due to the exercise of some recognized right, or whether the action you performed was one you had a recognized right to perform.
It's a nit - but an important one. The formulation "With rights come responsibilities." helps fuel movements to pass laws abrogating rights.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
looks like a pr0n site to me.
If something is "published" it doesn't matter if anyone actually reads it; it would still be considered defamation (unless the poster can prove with wikipedia logs that nobody read it; even then I think it would only mitigate damages). U.S. common law does require that it be transmitted to a third party, so whispering in the closet doesn't cut it, but posting it on the internet, to a popular page or not, would likely be regarded as such transmission.
This really isn't a big deal at all.
Anyone can make or edit any article on wikipedia and say that anyone/anything was involved with the assassination of JFK.
I could edit the article on dogs to say that "Dogs have a secret underground organization that directly supports al qaeda and assassinated JFK!!!". Does that mean that it actually happened? Of course not.
This issue is nothing more than someone editing a wikipedia article for some office humor, nothing to see here, move along please.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Brian Chase has publically admitted that he edited a Wikipedia entry for John Seigenthaler, making appear that Mr. Seigenthaler was involved in the assassination of JFK.
... for John Siegenthaler."
When I first read this, I though "ooh that dastardly Siegenthaler has orchestrated the whole thing just to make wikipedia look bad."
But on reading the article, I find that the emphasis was meant for "entry for John Siegenthaler" rather than "edited
After reading this, "Chase resigned because, he said, he did not want to cause problems for his company. Seigenthaler urged Chase's boss to rehire him, but Chase said this had not happened."
I am heartened at how forgiving Mr. Seigenthaler has been to the libelous fellow. Maybe he should sue the slashdot editors instead.
Wikipranks. Although the essence of a wikiprank is that you insert something which sounds plausible and bizarre at the same time. An example:
"Because of this widespread belief, the company actually started using prune juice in its product during the years 1946-1947. Unfortunately, it was quickly discovered that the addition of prune juice often resulted in bouts of uncontrollable diarrhea, leading the company to discontinue the practice in 1948. This discovery did, however, prove valuable in the development of a short-lived sister product, "Dr. Pepper for Seniors", which was popularized with the ad slogan "It Really Gets Things Moving"."
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Dollar Highway Financial News
How many people read it before he found out it existed from someone else? So, future libel is avoided (temporarily), but some damage to his reputation might have already been done. It's a flaw, and Jimmy Wales recognizes it, even if you don't.
My second point is that people who don't edit Wikipedia are not necessarily stupid. He shouldn't have to join in to every internet project that comes along in order to expect fair treatment - obviously. Wikipedia doesn't rely on people like him anyway. The community is supposed to get it right, whether or not an articles' subject visits every page where he is mentioned.
Try not to be so contemptuous of the non-internet savy.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Why GPG? It's against the low-barriers philosophy of wikis. You could go the Nupedia way and it would be more open.
About the branching, meet Wikinfo
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Oh ye of copious slash posts! You should know that any spelling correction, no matter how droll, includes a new one. Here, mispelled. Classic. Unless you did that on purpose. In which case, you are one subtle mofo.
"...the word "assasination" [sic] was mispelled in the summary. OK?"
How sad that this post of yours isn't invisible. Hoisted on your own guitar, eh?
Really, though, your original post was quite funny--too bad a couple basement-living mods wouldn't know funny if the hindenburg landed on em.
Perhaps you should try reading the link you provided. Herostratus "proudly proclaimed" his deed, unlike this guy, who did it semi-anonymously.
Yeah, and Herostratus was also an Ephesian. Not all analogies are perfect.
The affore-rated post does indeed look vaguely troll like, to anyone who didn't read its parent.
I will trust that, on a topic so relevant to freedom of speech as metamoderation, you will do better, and recognize mockery.
My karma can stand the hit. But do you want these fools getting more mod points when you post something that could appear wrong out-of-context?
Okay, done. Mod and MetaMod away.
Especially when you get the "nothing to see here" screen and the scent of First Post is in the air. Really, I am pretty good at spelling, though not a good typist. I'll never understand why I think "its" and write "it's" like an ignorant twit sometimes. [Also I misspelled "benifit".] But seriously for a moment, I've used Slashcode on another site and the editor is presented with a list of suspect words when publishing a story "ispell doesn't recognize...." so the editors have to be willfully ignorant to let their typos by. And I note that the "assassination" typo is now fixed, I did send an email about that but they only seem to act on about 1/4 of error notifications.
How does this bode for the wikipedia-wanna-be... everything2?
Wikipedia is not and never will be an authoritative source on anything. It's the very nature of the beast that makes all information found there suspect. Anyone who uses wikipedia as an authoritative source is a fool.
I of course agree with you. I'd be a fool not to. But I don't think you go far enough. The way you've worded this it sounds like Wikipedia isn't an authoritative source, but that something else is.
What might that be exactly? Not The New York Times, not The encyclopedia Britannica and surely not public officials. Personally, I tend to trust the OED and the CRC, but with dictionaries including intentional errors and any book potentially containing typos I don't trust them absolutely. I'm quite comfortable using Wikipedia as a source, something I consider about as trustworthy as a newspaper or a college professor.
But I can't think of a single source that I would consider absolutely authoritative, can you?
--MarkusQ
The thing is, you can tell a wikiprank when you see one. Your example was not plausible at all, while my original sentence was. The bizarre is rarely plausible.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
That website, if I recall correctly, IS from Mr. John Patrick Ennis, otherwise known as Sollog, himself. Some Wikipedia users and admins may recall that Sollog was heavily involved in trolling Wikipedia before his arrest. So... yeah. If someone is trying to prove that Wikipedia *does* suck, I highly suggest that it's not based off of Sollog's skewed point of view.
Well at least we can all sleep well knowing the "wikipedia hoax bandit" is caught...he won't be going around destroying wiki's anymore. Thats a great use of resources and tax money /sarcasm
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
Wikipedia is being constantly abused to attack political opponents.
In the German version of wikipedia (www.wikipedia.de) leftists are
constantly adding insults and downright disinformation to articles
regarding political opponents. One example of this is the less than
flattering wikipedia article about Frank Rennicke, a song-writer and
artist hated by the radical left in Germany. Too bad people in Germany
don't enjoy the same kind of legal protection they do in the US.
"Sneak attack. Seoul is under communist control. Check out C N N "
Lies you imperialist pig.
Yup, there it is.
Reading this raises a question in my mind that someone here might be able to answer. The parents quotes the grandparent's assertion, notes that the Supreme Court doesn't agree (without mentioning anything about the SCOTUS reasoning) and then ends his post. Is this a logical fallacy? Or are there some cases where an appeal to authority is a fair and conclusive way to dismiss an argument? I agree that the SCOTUS is more likely to have thought out these issues than the writer of the grandparent post, but if those arguments aren't mentioned by the parent, then how is it relevant to the discussion? Didn't the SCOTUS come up with the Dred Scott decision, too?
I wonder what percentage of slashdot posts end with this sentence. It would be an interesting or perhaps disturbing thing to know.
Will someone with knowledge (or, I guess, anyone who sounds knowledgeable) opine on the following question: Will IPv6 do away with NAT, and thus make tracking people's home IP address much easier (by removing the need for an address pool)?
I think what bothers so many people about Wikipedia's dynamic nature of truth is the important AND TRUE fact that all of our information sources are biased by the authors and editors that created them.
Until recently most people blindly assumed that 'everything in print is true'.
I know that I personally had my eyes opened when a reporter talked to me at a Unix Expo trade show and the following week all of my opinions were printed as fact in a very popular weekly IT news magazine.
This anecdote is the rule, not the exception. There isn't an article in existence that isn't colored by somebody's opinion and biases.
Wikipedia is good for us, not bad for us. It forces us to understand the subjective nature of all of our sources.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
It is interesting that the litigious page has copied Wikipedia's (presumably copy righted) logo.
I wonder if any rulings from this would also apply to blogs and places like slashdot.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Reply That is the biggest crock of disinformational... ...shite I have read in a long time. Breathtaking!
What happened was, Seigenthaler's attack on Wikipedia backfired--Wikipedia had its defenders, it made changes, and most importantly people were asking uncomfortable questions about why is Seigenthaler was so goddamned upset he didn't file a John Doe suit and find out who did it instead of making a big to-do on the talk show scene.
If I wanted to pull a prank on a co-worker, I'd write an article for Wikipedia claiming THEY killed JFK, RFK, MLK, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, AND were responsible for the cancellation of "Star Trek", the "New Coke" campaign, and Bush stuffing his flight suit crotch on "Mission Accompished" day.
Either Brandt, the 'anti-Wikipedia' guy who claimed to have traced him lied, or Chase DID write the article because he's a gubmint stooge who was told to do it. Or a combination of both. Why do I think this?
"Brandt has been a frequent critic of Wikipedia and started an anti-Wikipedia Web site in September after reading what he said was a false entry about himself."
Well, isn't he a convenient one to "discover the truth." HA!
"Using information in Seigenthaler's article and some online tools, Brandt traced the computer used to make the Wikipedia entry to the delivery company in Nashville. Brandt called the company and told employees about the Wikipedia problem but was not able to learn anything."
Nice and vague. WHAT 'information'--and presumably it means the article ABOUT Seigenthaler--as written it sounds like Seigenthaler wrote it. "SOME ONLINE TOOLS?" Oh, come on. HE could trace the puter but the rich as hell Mr. Seigheiler and his team of lawyers couldn't? Ho-kay.
"Brandt then sent an e-mail message to the company, asking for information about its courier services. A response bore the same Internet Protocol address that was left by the creator of the Wikipedia entry, offering further evidence of a connection."
So this means he didn't get the IP address from his 'online tools.'
Brandt is the tool, and he thinks we're all fools. He seems to be a big fan of privacy, but he had no problem using unnamed 'tools' to smoke out the alleged "prankster."
I have to wonder if Brandt's a deep cover spook. All I had to read was this:
"Brandt...He was an anti-Vietnam War activist while at college at the University of Southern California (USC). According to the Daily Trojan (January 12, 1971) Brandt was the editor and creator of Prevert, a monthly student activist newspaper, and the de facto leader of the student activist movement at this university in the late 1960s. On October 4, 1968, he was one of three members of Students for a Democratic Society who burned their draft cards in front of television cameras following a speech by Senator Edmund Muskie at USC."
Oh, yeah, SDS was full of spooks! Especially the ones who burned their draft cards on teevee.
I got that off...Wikipedia of course ROFL
They have more to say about Mr. Brandt:
"On 13 October 2005 [13], Brandt launched a new website criticizing Wikipedia called Wikipedia Watch. This was a direct response to his inability to modify or delete the article that was made about himself (this article), which he stated was an invasion of privacy [14], and subsequently the inability of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to respond to his fax requesting for this article to be deleted [15], that he sent to Jimmy Wales on 16 October 2005. Brandt was blocked indefinitely from Wikipedia on 9 November 2005 with the cited reasons being "repeated legal threats, sock-puppet use, bad-faith edits, trolling and other disruptive behavior" [16]; the content of www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html, especially the compilation of personal details about Wikipedia editors, was one of the major reasons cited for this block [17]."
Wikipedia's version says:
"Brandt found that the IP address used by the poster of the defamatory information was also used to host a website, 65.81.97.208/ , with the text, "Welcome to Rush Delivery."
This is backwards from
This case is a great example for others to follow. A person admits his guilt and takes full responsibility for it and his accuser chooses not to press charges. This is the way conflicts should be resolved. If this happened more often, things would cost a lot less, since goods and services would include less overhead for insurance against litigation.
And its slogan is
wikipediasucks.com
For all your adult needs
So, are they now claiming that Wikipedia can suck your [insert sexual organ reference here]?
--Dan
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