National Guard, I think not. 
Posted on 12/14/2005 1:36:37 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Online encyclopedia Wikipedia is awash in controversy. The imbroglio was touched off by an anonymously written biography entry that linked former USA Today Editor John Seigenthaler Sr. with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The writer, Brian Chase, has issued an apology for a prank he says went terribly awry.
Seigenthaler, in a Nov. 29 USA Today editorial, criticized Wikipedia and called the fake biography "Internet character assassination."
The incident has cast doubt on the credibility of Wikipedia, which lets users anonymously create new articles and edit existing entries -- which number more than 1 million in 10 languages. On Dec. 7, New York Times Business Editor Larry Ingrassia sent a memo urging his staff not to use the site to check information. And on Dec. 12, a group based in Long Beach, N.Y., announced it would pursue a class action against the site to represent those "who believe that they have been defamed or who have been the subject of anonymous and malicious postings to the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia."
The encyclopedia is designed to be self-policing, allowing the public to weigh in and correct inaccuracies. But the Seigenthaler entry "slipped through the cracks," says Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder and president of Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia. The site is taking steps to prevent a recurrence, he says. Those include barring unregistered users from creating new pages. Wales spoke with BusinessWeek Online's Burt Helm on Dec. 13. Edited excerpts from their conversation follow.
What happened with Seigenthaler's biography?
It slipped through the cracks. In the community, we have what we call a New Pages Patrol -- they put new entries in a category and add links and so on. They just weren't able to keep up with how many new pages were coming online every day. It wasn't what was supposed to happen at that stage in the process.
Since then, we've decided that we want to slow down the creation of new pages, so starting in January we're preventing unregistered users from creating new pages, because so often those have to be deleted.
About how many people use and contribute to Wikipedia?
The number I like to talk about is the number of very active editors -- those that do the bulk of the work. As of October, there were about 1,850 for the English version of Wikipedia, and 4,573 worldwide. We don't know how many unique users visit the site because we're lame and don't keep track of it -- we don't sell advertising, so we don't have to. But we get about 2.5 billion page views per month.
How should users view Wikipedia? Do you think they should consider it authoritative?
It should be thought of as a work in progress -- it's our intention to be Britannica or better quality, and our policies and everything are designed with that goal in mind. We don't reach that quality yet -- we know that. We're a work in progress.
Do you think students and researchers should cite Wikipedia?
No, I don't think people should cite it, and I don't think people should cite Britannica, either -- the error rate there isn't very good. People shouldn't be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should be solid enough to give good, solid background information to inform your studies for a deeper level. And really, it's more reliable to read Wikipedia for background than to read random Web pages on the Internet.
Seigenthaler's main criticism of Wikipedia is that contributors are allowed to edit and add to articles anonymously. Why do you feel it's important to allow contributors and site administrators to remain anonymous?
There are two reasons I would put forward. First, on the Internet, it's impossible to actually confirm people's identity in the first place, short of getting credit-card information. On any site it's very easy to come up with a fake identity, regardless.
Second, there are definitely people working in Wikipedia who may have privacy reasons for not wanting their name on the site. For example, there are people working on Wikipedia from China, where the site is currently blocked. We have a contributor in Iran who has twice been told his name has been turned into the police for his work in Wikipedia. He's brave. His real name is known, actually. But there are lots of reasons for privacy online that aren't nefarious.
Doesn't the anonymity open the door for easy slander and libel?
I would say, in general, no. In a certain respect, when you have any kind of Web site with broad public participation -- Web forums, unmoderated mailing lists, comments on blogs, blogs themselves -- there's always the potential that someone is going to write something nasty. It doesn't mean that we're perfect, of course, but the difference at Wikipedia is you have a community that's empowered to do something about it.
fyi, saw you post re: Wiki earlier
Posted earlier..
FREEP this: Wikipedia's Biased Description of Free Republic ^
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1501360/posts
The imbroglio was touched off by an anonymously written biography entry that linked former USA Today Editor John Seigenthaler Sr. with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
That reminds me of something I did on the ESPN message board, except that I linked another poster with fictoinal confessions of having AIDS and I besmirched him with several hurtful polls ("How gay is VikesFan83").
That'll teach him to question my assertion that Robert Gallery would be out of place at Tackle and is a natural Guard.
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"
--
I guess this "writer" supports leaving loaded weapons in the crib with the baby and trusting the baby to not abuse the trust bestowed on it.
Yup.
Be a part of revisionist history.
someone enter this in the wikipedia entry for wikipedia.
I would bet a dollar to a donut that you are Sapp_QB_Killa on the Bucs message board, too.
I dont understand how it can be authoritative when anyone can edit any article. that's just silly for an encyclopedia.
National Guard, I think not.
They deserve whatever they get.
I would bet a dollar to a donut that you are Sapp_QB_Killa on the Bucs message board, too.
Uh oh. Bucs4eva, is that you? When I told you I wanted to smash your head in and leave you in a ditch by the side of the road, I meant it in the most compasionate way possible. Although I still disagree with using Alstott in a short yardage capacity at this state in his career.
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"
They just can't let the MSM have all the fun.;)
Ah yes, Wikipedia, the site that once publicly proclaimed the "hilarious attacks" of Sept. 11, 2001, thanks to its tamper-friendly architecture. This place has little credibility in the world of fact-checking, and elsewhere for that matter.
we are providing a service to the community as a whole by expanding the knowledge of the public.
Great idea in concept, but it sure sounds like it's a lot more effort than it is worth if you have to constantly "edit" it.
Too bad insulting alot of folks along the way is aprt of the strcuture,, until ya edit that part , it is.
Your comment about FR..
"The article is more or less fair. We are a conservative-leaning board; we do not tolerate Bush-bashing; and we, unfortunately, do have an ugly streak at times that shines through the more thoughtful posts."
is a bit suspect in my view tho.
using ugly streak and conservative-leaning don't really do justice to FR, imo. Could you re-edit that piece of your remarks for me? ;-)
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