Wikipedia and Trust…
There were many emails dashing back and forth in the J-School this week about false information on Wikipedia on John Seigenthaler Sr., who is 78 years old and the former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. He found that there had been false information on Wikipedia for some time about himself, and so he corrected it. All of this brought up the issue of trust in Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales is quoted. The New York Times writes about it today.
–karen
Yup I read this guys article. He really hates wikipedia. It circulated on
one of the library listservs and sadly most librarians that bothered to
respond agree wholeheartedly and think wikipedia is garbage. One thing I
found silly was that the guy did not remove the false information himself.
He just let it sit there and contacted Jimbo Wales to complain. I understand
his frustration, but it is no different from wacky stuff being posted to any
other website. As is stated in the article, librarians and journalists have
always tried to back up their sources, even the Encyclopedia Britannica, so I
can’t quite understand why Wikipedia is so different. That is except for the
fact that he could have corrected the incorrect content himself, which to me
seems an improvement. In the NYT’s article, Lessig is quoted as stating
basically the same thing. What I believe is Seigenthaler’s original article
is located here.
Comment by habib — December 5, 2005 @ 6:41 pm
There are changes afoot. Seigenthaler isn’t the only one upset with the wikipedia method, Dave Winer and others have traced erasures to Adam Curry. See this CNet article which begins:
Comment by Administrator — December 6, 2005 @ 2:27 am