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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."
Has Wikipedia been a solid information resource? It shouldn't be taken THAT seriously...
Maybe not illegal, but, could lead to a civil tort at the very least.
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.
FTFA: "In a letter to Seigenthaler, Chase said he thought that Wikipedia was a "gag" Web site and that he had written the assassination tale to shock a co-worker"
So much so about the crediblity of wikipedia...
On second thoughts, wouldn't wikipedia do well with a moderation system ?
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).
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.
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®
And if you're blind, hearing the article read out by a screen reader?
Is a recording of a slander slander or libel?
Is a public reading of a libel libel or slander?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
it's designed to control obscenity and pr0nography
Isn't "any information" an unusual way to spell "obscenity and pornography"?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
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.
Oh sweet Jesus... watch now as the "Wikipedia process" makes a total fool of itself again. Watch in horror as legitimate Wikipedia editors defend this article on the basis that it is "notable" because of the noise it created. In the best case, enough editors will be pissed off about the "hoax" that they will come out to vote delete and it'll only hang around for a week. In the worst case... watch as at least one week goes by while everyone sits around and wanks off about democracy and "the process"... watch in horror as idiot admins defend it... watch in disgust as the VFD turns out as a no consensus and yet another week goes around in the nightmare Kafka-esque Wikipedia process while this shitty worthless article remains. In the worst case, it'll go around and around half a dozen times until it gets an immunity from deletion (any Wikipedia editor knows which article I'm hinting at here).
I used to be a regular wikipedia editor -- I used to care and make an effort. Now I'm just seriously disillusioned with it all. It's just filling up with shit faster than genuine editors with an interest in making something other than a dumping ground for crap and vanity trivia can clean it up.
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.
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.
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....
Hi, writer of History of Alaska on Wikipedia here, User: Toothpaste. Daniel Brandt wasn't banned for Wikipedia Watch, which he had created a few days before he was banned, if I recall correctly. Wikipedia had an article on him because he was notable for Google Watch and Wikipedia Watch, perhaps slightly more so today, due to a bit more media attention from all this. Brandt had tried to edit out parts of his article that were true and sourced, but that he did not like, and repeatedly tried to hold a vote for the article to be deleted, and started to do so under a false username after the first one had been banned. Predictably, Brian Chase was one of those people, that upon discovering Wikipedia, think, "I'll just replace 'Jesus' with 'vagina' and see how long that lasts, because that's how I get my shits and giggles." This, of course, constitutes most of all Wikipedian vandalism, with the rest being people that think Wikipedia is for spamming their GIF-laden Geocities website. Of the two types of these "experiments" I have seen, with the former being replacing George Bush's picture with a clown. The latter is subtly changing things around, so that Bush's article says "In the years of 1987 to 1989, George Bush worked mostly as an investor in the Texaco company," when he did not. I find the latter more annoying as a vandalism reverter. I hope this incident scares vandals into knowing they could be held accountable, as it's only a matter of time before someone actually does try to sue. However, what constitutes this libel Siegenthaler is sueing for? What makes this sneaky vandalism more annoying than earlier examples? Because it could be more easily mistaken for truth, is all, but I'm sure that would not hold up. I am most shocked that within all this, this Daniel Brandt has media attention due to tracking down the IP address, and the media, the Seattle Times for goodness's sake is not getting it right at all, which says something about the creditbility of non-Wikipedia sources, too.
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
More dangerous are those who deliberately (or unknowlingly) slant the coverage of contentious subjects in one direction. My own experience was with Wiki editors (or whatever they are called) whose standard of proof for one side was dramatically higher than their standard of proof for another side.
That's called bias, and Wikipedia, at least in some areas, reflects certain biases rather badly.
However, as someone else pointed out, it shouldn't be anyone's final source of truth, but rather a starting point. It has good references (although in the changes I submitted, not only were they thrown out but so was my reference - as non-existent - even though a second's Google would have proved the existence of the reference as it was on sale at Amazon).
Wikipedia is a great experiment and a great resource. It's biggest danger is that people take it as the final answer. But then, far too many people take the main stream media as the final answer also, which is why they have so much power.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Just like people were once told that the sun circled the earth. For both of wich I got no absolute proof.
You can, in fact, prove that the earth revolves around the sun (of course it's all relative to your POV, but you can prove what most people mean when they say the earth revolves around the sun). It's just a matter of some astronomical observations with your naked eye and a little ptolemaic math.
I think the GGP was largely correct, and Judith Miller is an excellent example. There are some exceptions, Fox springs to mind, but generally journalists should be aware that being caught in a lie or in deliberate bias (in Miller's case, this is what's hanged her. I have no doubt if she'd gone to jail to protect a source and not been seen as a partisan hack she'd have been defended by her collegues, not shunned) is a surefire route to losing your job.
Judith Miller is just about the worst example you could pick to discredit the argument of the GGP.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.