j's scratchpad

John Seigenthaler, Sr., assistant to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the 1960s, expresses anger and frustration at some negative false passages that appeared for a few weeks in an entry about him in Wikipedia. "… I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool," he writes in this USA TODAY editorial.

He also explains the steps he took to try to find out the person’s identity by tracing an IP address back to a service provider and the laws that protect Internet users’ identities.

Newslib* is flowing with a discussion about this article and Wikipedia in general. Is there a place for librarians within the Wikimedia community? Of course. If we’re really concerned about Wikipedia as a source, what can we do to get involved in the community to improve it and address our concerns?

While pointing out Case Western Reserve University’s CaseWiki on RSS4Lib, Ken wonders how large a wiki community must be before it becomes self-correcting.

*Newslib’s archives are restricted to list members.

(I meant to post this last night, but I was so tired when I got home, I just went to sleep. It’s become such a huge discussion in many circles, I’m cheating a little and posting it from work.)

Addenda 12/4: The New York Times reports on this situation and includes some quotes from news librarians who participated in the Newslib discussion.

12/5: I should put a shameless plug for Wikimania here for you people new to the conversation. It’s a huge conference about wikis that’ll be in Boston this coming summer.

Derek Willis shares how he came to be interviewed in the New York Times piece and some of his thoughts on Wikipedia and the discussion.

CNN facilitated a discussion between Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, and John Seigenthaler this afternoon. Seigenthaler raised many concerns, which Jimmy tried to address. Seigenthaler’s entry is currently protected from editing, but he expressed concerns that some of the information is still incorrect (though he didn’t specify) and that an anonymous user wrote that he is an assassin, which is still in the history of the page. A transcript and video are available.

12/6: I completely forgot to say that Jimbo announced during the interview that now only registered users of Wikipedia can create new articles. He hopes the move will help curb some of the vandalism. It should, at least, allow Wikipedia to better track mischief makers. The Associated Press’ Dan Goodin shares some info about the change.

Now the San Francisco Chronicle is held a discussion with Jimmy Wales and John Seigenthaler. Seigenthaler explains he didn’t just edit the wiki himself because he doesn’t want anything to do with Wikipedia. Jimbo observes that the rumors of Seigenthaler’s role in the assassination of the Kennedys might be spread further by his editorial in USA Today than by what was in Wikipedia. They rehash many of the complexities of the unfortunate situation.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Wikis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.