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Online Journalism News

Journalism stalwart condemns 'flawed' Wikipedia

Posted: 06/12/05 By: Jemima Kiss
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USA Today's founding editorial director John Seigenthaler published a damning editorial about Wikipedia last week after he discovered what he described as a 'false and malicious' biography about him had been published on the site.

The biography alleged that Mr Seigenthaler was briefly implicated in John F Kennedy's assassination.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was unable to identify who had posted the text, and Mr Seigenthaler discovered that US privacy laws would only identify the user if a court subpoena is issued. The ISPs themselves are also protected from libel because they are not regarded as publishers.

The entry was live on Wikipedia from 26 May to 5 October this year, and was also republished on Answers.com and Reference.com.

Wikipedia's credibility will not have been helped by the brief vandalism of a menu page today which was changed to read: "John Seigenthaler is a cry baby who needs to grow up". The user was unidentifiable and appeared to be a customer of a New Jersey-based ISP.

Mr Seigenthaler condemned Wikipedia as a 'flawed and irresponsible' research tool.

"We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research - but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects," he wrote.

The blog Lies.com was unsympathetic to Mr Seigenthaler's concerns, noting that his editorial in USA Today gave the defamatory remarks far more attention than they would have received had he pursued a legal case through the courts.

One comment by 'ymatt' on the site added: "In a number of ways, I think Wikipedia is the purest expression of what the non-commercial internet is all about. And I think it’s going to take a while for people to get used to what that means.

"One of these lessons is that once you reach a certain (fairly low) level of notoriety, some dipwad on the internet is going to slander you. Unfortunately this has to be learned both by the people who will be slandered, who need to chill a little - but also users, who need to learn that the free information on the net is both amazingly complete and useful, and frequently complete bullshit.

"It’s a boon for the sceptical, but a minefield to the credulous."

An amended biography of Mr Seigenthaler, including details of his complaints against the site, is now live on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia announced on Monday that it had changed its publishing process so that only registered users will be able to crete new articles, although anonymous users will still be able to edit pieces.

Nearly 50,000 readers voted on a web poll on CNN.com on the trustworthiness of Wikipedia; 62 per cent of voters said they did not trust information on the site.

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