For those who often used Wikipedia as an information source
here's an interesting story about one man's experience:
About Wikipedia
By John Seigenthaler
Wed Nov 30, 6:50 AM ET
"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert
Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to
have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both
John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven."
- Wikipedia
This is a highly personal story about Internet character
assassination. It could be your story.
I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious
"biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia,
the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown
and virtually untraceable. There was more:
"John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned
to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started one of
the country's largest public relations firms shortly
thereafter."
At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything
negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography
was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the
early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when
my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later
to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and
Answers.com.
I had heard for weeks from teachers, journalists and historians
about "the wonderful world of Wikipedia," where millions of people
worldwide visit daily for quick reference "facts," composed and
posted by people with no special expertise or knowledge - and
sometimes by people with malice.
At my request, executives of the three websites now have removed
the false content about me. But they don't know, and can't find
out, who wrote the toxic sentences.
Anonymous author
I phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder and asked, "Do you ...
have any way to know who wrote that?"
"No, we don't," he said. Representatives of the other two websites
said their computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from
Wikipedia, never checking whether it is false or factual.
Naturally, I want to unmask my "biographer." And, I am interested
in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and
irresponsible research tool.
But searching cyberspace for the identity of people who post
spurious information can be frustrating. I found on Wikipedia the
registered IP (Internet Protocol) number of my "biographer"-
65-81-97-208. I traced it to a customer of BellSouth Internet. That
company advertises a phone number to report "Abuse Issues." An
electronic voice said all complaints must be e-mailed. My two
e-mails were answered by identical form letters, advising me that
the company would conduct an investigation but might not tell me
the results. It was signed "Abuse Team."
Wales, Wikipedia's founder, told me that BellSouth would not be
helpful. "We have trouble with people posting abusive things over
and over and over," he said. "We block their IP numbers, and they
sneak in another way. So we contact the service providers, and they
are not very responsive."
After three weeks, hearing nothing further about the Abuse Team
investigation, I phoned BellSouth's Atlanta corporate headquarters,
which led to conversations between my lawyer and BellSouth's
counsel. My only remote chance of getting the name, I learned, was
to file a "John or Jane Doe" lawsuit against my "biographer." Major
communications Internet companies are bound by federal privacy laws
that protect the identity of their customers, even those who defame
online. Only if a lawsuit resulted in a court subpoena would
BellSouth give up the name.
Little legal recourse
Federal law also protects online corporations - BellSouth, AOL, MCI
Wikipedia, etc. - from libel lawsuits. Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states
that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall
be treated as the publisher or speaker." That legalese means that,
unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers
cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens
posted by others.
Recent low-profile court decisions document that Congress
effectively has barred defamation in cyberspace. Wikipedia's
website acknowledges that it is not responsible for inaccurate
information, but Wales, in a recent C-Span interview with Brian
Lamb, insisted that his website is accountable and that his
community of thousands of volunteer editors (he said he has only
one paid employee) corrects mistakes within minutes.
My experience refutes that. My "biography" was posted May 26. On
May 29, one of Wales' volunteers "edited" it only by correcting the
misspelling of the word "early." For four months, Wikipedia
depicted me as a suspected assassin before Wales erased it from his
website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com
and Reference.com for three more weeks.
In the C-Span interview, Wales said Wikipedia has "millions" of
daily global visitors and is one of the world's busiest websites.
His volunteer community runs the Wikipedia operation, he said. He
funds his website through a non-profit foundation and estimated a
2006 budget of "about a million dollars."
And so 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. Congress
has enabled them and protects them.
When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip."
She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the
feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them
back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things
about people."
For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia.
John Seigenthaler, a retired journalist, founded The Freedom Forum
First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He also is a
former editorial page editor at USA TODAY.