Writer linked journalist to Kennedy assassinations
What the article doesn’t say is how many people read it, how many of those believed it, and what kind of fallout Seigenthaler received.
I also relish the irony of a founder of USA Today complaining about people “writing anything they want about anybody.”
I think the key in this battle of the founder of USA Today against Wikipedia is not about accuracy but rather about paid media vs free media. Notice in the interviews about this, the interviewer keeps asking who Wikipedia has hired to fact check or do various other things. Jimbo keeps saying we don’t hire anyone, and the paid media interviewer looks vaguely triumphant. The interviews seem to focus again and again on the lack of screening of the editors at wikipedia and how can an organization that just allows anyone to contribute be seen as reliable.
The New York Times now has an official policy against citing Wikipedia. I think maybe they should lighten up on wikipedia and encourage someone to do more factchecking before publishing stories. Jason Blair is not the only problem they have had. The other day KellyM found a reference in the New York times some current practice of the Soviet Union. Kinda interesting as there is no such county currently. I can’t comment on the accuracy of USA Today, because I never read USA Today and I don’t think many others do either. Their entire market seems to be to hotels and businesses and not to consumers. I don’t think anyone takes it seriously, and perhaps that is why this guy is ticked off.
Wikipedia is not meant as a news source, but it often makes a damn good one. When there is a major breaking news story, I go to Wikipedia to check what they have. It is fun to try to catch them being behind; I’ve not often managed it. Not only do they seem to have the story at the same time the real news sites do, their stories are updated more quickly to reflect changes and corrections, and Wikipedia stays up when the news sites are sllooowww because of all the hits, I can get to Wikipedia and it serves the page about as fast as it always does.
The thing about this whole controversy that gets me is that by making this grand fuss this guy has made sure his name will be associated with the assassinations of Bobbty and John F. Kennedy by the public, when if that prospect really bothered him he would have quietly corrected the article and then asked that the history be purged as well. The article was not high traffic, or it would have been corrected quickly.
Wikipedia doesn’t keep access logs (we get up to 6000 hits a second; it’s kinda hard to retain logs at that data rate), so we don’t know how many people actually saw the article. We figure that it wasn’t too many people, though.
I read that as: Chase said something completely stupid so that he could avoid losing a libel case.
Is this recent Wikipedia debate significantly different from the same debates that arose when people first started making web pages? There were all sorts of cries from some sectors that people have to be made accountable for the information they put on a page, IP addresses must be logged, etc… I recall it being pretty much the stuff we’ve been hearing the past couple weeks about Wikipedia. And also about blogs a year or so ago.
People need to get in their head that’s there’s going to be information on the web that will not be as tightly controlled as classic media, and even wrong. Get over it.
Uh… it’s the most read paper in the country. The irony Rilchiam may have been referring to was the scandal involving Jack Kelley, who was the paper’s star reporter for a time - until it turned out he’d been faking stories.
Seems a good assumption: if any appreciable number of people saw it, someone would have fixed it.
You just feel like shaking the guy by the shoulders and saying, “The article’s wrong? Don’t bitch and whine, go in there and change it!”
Some people just don’t get it.
He’s old, very old, he doesn’t really understand what Wikipedia is.
BTW: UserFriendly.Org similar track in one of my favorite comics.
Why so? It took me a long time to notice its existence. And only when links to Wikipedia became commonplace on this board did I check it out.
If I wasn’t using the net a lot I too would have assumed that an “encyclopedia” that anybody can fill and edit at any time for any reason couldn’t posibly be taken seriously by anybody and that its content would be in all likehood 25% facts, 25% unsupported rants, 25% mistakes and 25% lunacy.
It’s not like everybody on this planet is intimely familiar with Wikipedia or shoud be expected to be.
I’m sorry, but if I’m publically accused of being involved in a murder, I’m going to bitch and whine…
Well, of course he’s right to be offended, it’s a pretty serious accusation. But it’s nowhere near as serious as an accusation in a newspaper or a magazine, let alone a book or a regular encyclopedia, because a) people with the slightest idea of how Wikipedia works know that it’s not the most credible source, and b) unlike print media, where the error is there for good and exists as long as the paper it’s printed on, the error in Wikipedia can be erased instantly.
Not surprisingly, the John Seigenthaler page on Wikipedia “has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with vandalism.” I was tempted myself to add text saying he was a suspect in the disappearances of Judge Crater, Amelia Earhart, and Jesus Christ’s body.
I suppose not. And anybody opening to the front page and reading some outrageous prose will be easily confused about whether it is intended to be serious. For example:
My og! It’s like an article from The Onion!
Think about it: someone commits libel and is caught. Either he is incapable of figuring out the intent of Wikipedia—after figuring out how to create an account and edit articles—or he claims ignorance to avoid having to pay in a libel case. I find the first description to be a bit unlikely; however, the second description, given the circumstances, sounds quite likely. From the OP’s link:
The notion that a website’s bio of Seigenthaler would shock friends of the family implies that there must be some reason for it to be shocking. If a story about Bat Boy shows up on CNN, it’s shocking; if it shows up in the Weekly World News, it’s amusing, not shocking.
Most copies put out in public, but most actually read? I seriously doubt it. I have seen drifts of the damn things in various establishments – drifts of untouched copies just making a mess off in one corner to be cleaned up by the evening staff and replenished in the morning.
Isn’t Wikipedia pretty much a message board, just like the SDMB? A good one; interesting, and sometimes informative, and opinionated–but a message board. I’d never been on Wikipedia till today; I looked up the four people I’ve done biographies of. Found small but significant errors in all four entries. But still, good overviews of who they were. Nothing that should be used as citations, but . . . well, message board entries.
(I’m sure to be asked “why didn’t you correct the errors?” Because I’ve never been on Wikipedia and know nothing about it; and mostly because if I made it my business to correct every error on the Interet, I’d never have time to do anything else!)
Please take the time to correct those 4 articles. Wiki is not just a message board. It is a growing, organic Encyclopedia that is becoming the most important free information source on the net. There are several sites that just duplicate Wiki’s articles and Google appears to give extra weight in ranking to wikipedia. These articles are possibly the most widely accessible locations for knowledge about these people.
If you need help with the corrections I am willing. You could even Email me the changes and I will make them over the next few days. My Email is public.
Jim
A bit of hijack - not sure if I am being wooshed, but the frontpage article on the surname of Yuan seems quite accurate to me. The Yuans were holding important posts in the government since around 100 AD in the Han dynasty. Or am I missing something?
I am thinking whether it is possible for recently added addition to be highlighted in yellow or something (perhaps that can be made into an option) so that people who wish to edit or proofread articles can immediately know where are the changes.
Or you can mail them to info-en@wikipedia.org, which is a ticket tracker monitored by volunteers (including myself) who will either make the changes for you or explain to you how to make them yourself. 
See the “history” listings for each article, and the “compare versions” function.