Seth Finkelstein – The Guardian – Thursday September 28, 2006:
Wikipedia describes itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. With some minor exceptions, anyone can change any article – for good or ill. While the benefits of such a low barrier for participation have been widely touted, the concomitant problems are less well known. Such as, what if you find yourself in it, but don’t want to be?
Wikipedia has a short biography of me, originally added in February 2004, mostly concerned with my internet civil liberties achievements. After discovering in May 2006 that it had been vandalised in March, possibly by a long-time opponent, and that the attack had been subsequently propagated to many other sites which (legally) repackage Wikipedia’s content, the article’s existence seemed to me overall to be harmful rather than helpful.
For people who are not very prominent, Wikipedia biographies can be an “attractive nuisance”. It says, to every troll, vandal, and score-settler: “Here’s an article about a person where you can, with no accountability whatsoever, write any libel, defamation, or smear. It won’t be a marginal comment with the social status of an inconsequential rant, but rather will be made prominent about the person, and reputation-laundered with the institutional status of an encyclopedia.”
Institutionally, Wikipedia has a difficult problem: to allow anyone to decline to be a subject of an article would be an admission that the supposed collective editing process is deeply flawed
When information is given from the direct source or PR person representing the person
My undertsanding is you can put a lock on it.
Thier are also many people monitoring.
I found it to be very useful and informative.
From John C. Dvorak’s wiki entry I learned the following:
1. He was at the height of his carreer in 1994.
2. He earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
3. He has a wife and children.
4. He assaulted a cameraman on the C-Net Central set.
5. He is critical of Macs.
John, how accurate is your wiki entry?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak
geeze they don’t seem to like you a ton over there…
who would have thought? 😉
John:
Actually this looks kind of cool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak
But they left out the part about your staring role in 8mm Porn films.
Title “Cranky college kids”
I need to go in thier and edit that page. 🙂
PS I hope you gave the cameraman a black eye…
Its the first amendment, if its libel against yourself i think you can sue, but if its true, there is not much you can do. I think wikipedia is great, and they have done a good job of protecting topics which might be used for vandals and the like, through registration and newly registered users, which if you visit his site would be the case at the moment for his name which can be seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Finkelstein
Interesting thoughts…though it’s interesting that SN once again is attacking Wikipedia. He won’t stop until it’s shut down it seems.
Though the article has some valid points. Perhaps I’ll go and make an “SN” entry there and see what happens. But John D. already has one over there, but I seriously doubt he cares. But it just bugs the HELL out of SN for some reason. Go back over the past Wikipedia articles here and you’ll see that about 90% of the negative ones were all submitted by SN. What’s the deal? They kick your dog or something SN? Personally, I can take or leave Wikipedia.
Also Tom, I though there was a right to privacy if you’re just a private citizen and not a public figure. Or does that just apply to parodies?
“SN once again is attacking Wikipedia.”
How the heck am I attacking Wikipedia! I’m just reposting what Seth Finkelstein wrote, you idiot! Learn how blogs work before posting.
And for the first time I did not point out that Jimmy Wales is a former pornographer! That should get me some points!
This question can be answered with another question: Should you have the right not to be on the Internet?
The answer is the same, no, we have such a thing as free speech in the US. Wikipedia does have a policy that you have to be somewhat noteable to deserve and entry. So if you make it past that requirement, you are somewhat of a public figure so it’s an even stronger no.
If you don’t think the entry accurately describes you, you can comment on the discussion page (editing your own entry is a taboo, unless it’s a fact like correcting your birthdate) and let the administrators (or post on the Village pump) to get someone else to evaluate the changes you propose.
Under the subject line “Wikipedia si teh bets!!” my son sent me a link yesterday to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Island where one finds that Powhattan told John Smith the Powhattan tribe had wiped out the Roanoke settlers. The article briefly reported: “Powhatan, who later got bigger man boobs, reportedly produced several English-made iron implements to back his claim.”
I just checked and the information implying Powhattan’s later-days hormonal levels needed adjustment has been deleted. Does that mean you can trust Wiki information, or that you can’t?
So let me see if I understand this correctly,
Seth is a champion of openess and hates censorship, but he wants to be able to censor other writers when they write about him.
Is that what is going on here.
Can you say double standard?
#7 And for the first time I did not point out that Jimmy Wales is a former pornographer! That should get me some points!
Comment by SN — 10/1/2006 @ 9:25 am
Who is Jimmy Wales and what is wrong with being a pornographer?
Remember Amanda Wenk, the high school girl with massive boobs who posted all over her pics on flickr and they ended up all over the internet? She requested Wikipedia take down here article, and they still have to this day.
No… I didn’t remember Amanda Wenk. I never heard of her. Now, I feel dirty for looking her up online. 🙁
She has no Wikipedia entry though…
Yea man, she was totally huge, like one of those crazy viral youtube videos. There’s still a lot of pictures floating around but that was so 2005…