Online Journalism NewsUSA 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.
Wikipedia announced on Monday that it had changed its publishing process so that only registered users will be able to create new articles, although anonymous users will still be able to edit pieces.
Journalism stalwart condemns 'flawed' Wikipedia
Posted: 6 December 2005 By: Jemima Kiss http://www.journalism.co.uk
For the full article:
http://tinyurl.com/cu3u2
