Wikipedia Woes

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moongirl
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Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Wikipedia editor who posed as professor is Ky. dropout
Man resigns post after controversy

By Andrew Wolfson

He touted himself as a tenured professor with doctorates in theology and canon law.

But the volunteer editor and fact checker for the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia turned out to be a 24-year-old dropout from Centre College and Lexington Community College.

Wikipedia, which was founded in 2001 and is run by a foundation in St. Petersburg, Fla., recorded its millionth entry last year -- nearly 10 times the number in the most comprehensive edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, according to the New Yorker article.

In an e-mail to The Courier-Journal, Pamela McCarthy, deputy editor of The New Yorker, said the magazine's editors and writer, Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff, "were comfortable" with the material from Essjay because of Wikipedia's confirmation of his work.

But Regrettheerror.com, which reports on corrections in the media, said The New Yorker would have avoided the mistake if it had heeded a cartoon that ran in its July 5, 1993, issue.

It shows a dog typing at a computer keyboard, over the caption, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

For the full article go to:
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbc ... 7703060446
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Regret The Error reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media.
http://www.regrettheerror.com/


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Los Angeles Times - July 24, 2006
Why Wiki Can Drive You Wacky
When free-form information gets it wrong, watch out.
By Bernard Haisch


YOU DO NOT get to choose whether or not an article on you appears in Wikipedia, and you have no veto power over its contents. The article can cast you as a genius or an imbecile, a respected scientist or a crackpot. a vandal could replace a page, any page, with total gibberish. The page on Einstein might have a statement inserted to the effect that he was a Nazi collaborator, or that his theories have been totally discredited, or that he was a silicon-based life form from Proxima Centauri. Wikipedia does not operate by your rules but by its own conventions; I suggest you learn to accept it. I can assure you resistance is futile."

What brought about my Wikipedia battle? As part of my mainstream career in astrophysics, I did NASA-sponsored research and served for 10 years as one of the scientific editors of the leading journal in that field, the Astrophysical Journal. But simultaneously I edited the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which attempts to provide a scientific forum for critical discussion of unorthodox topics, such as parapsychology and analysis of UFO reports, some of which had mundane explanations. I did this as an unpaid public service.

I discovered in June that a Wikipedia editor had written an article on me that concentrated almost solely on the latter topics while virtually ignoring the 100-plus scientific papers I had published. It was a draining editing battle to try to coax the article into something halfway reasonable, which was helped by the decision of the "editor" to drop out of Wikipedia. But the article could again be rewritten by another anonymous editor. Of course, you too might decide to edit my article. Please refrain.

As for me, Oscar Wilde once said: "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." It's a small consolation.
Fot the full article go to:
http://www.calphysics.org/WikiOpEd.html

[BERNARD HAISCH is president of the Digital Universe Foundation, which is working on a free expert-directed online encyclopedia.]
Digital Universe Foundation
http://www.dufoundation.org/
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Another Wiki-Wobble!!
MIAMI Actor-comedian Sinbad had the last laugh after his Wikipedia entry announced he was dead, the performer said Thursday. Rumors began circulating Saturday regarding the posting, said Sinbad, who first got a telephone call from his daughter. The gossip quieted, but a few days later the 50-year-old entertainer said the phone calls, text messages and e-mails started pouring in by the hundreds.

"Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again," the Los Angeles-based entertainer told The Associated Press in a phone interview.


The St. Petersburg-based company, which describes itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," leaves it to a vast user community to catch factual errors and other problems. Apparently, someone edited it to say Sinbad died of a heart attack. By the time the error was caught, e-mail links of the erroneous page had been forwarded to hundreds of people.

A note on Sinbad's Wikipedia page Thursday night said the site has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with vandalism.

Wikipedia was created in 2001 as a Web research tool. It has more than 1.6 million articles, contributed by members of the public.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007- ... nbad_N.htm
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LMAO I read that yesterday..another wikiooops..
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And the woes continue...
Wikipedia: an online encyclopedia torn apart
Last Updated: 11/10/2007
Tireless volunteer effort has turned Wikipedia into the world's most popular information source. But increasingly acrimonious arguments about what it should include threaten to split the online encyclopedia in two.

There's a war going on behind the pages of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written and edited by its readers.
For the full story go to:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/ma ... wiki11.xml
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Wikipedia Flagged Revisions
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which can be amended by anyone, has introduced new measures that mean changes made to the pages of living people will have to be approved before they can be published.

The move marks a fundamental shift in Wikipedia's approach to the gathering and sharing of online information, and means the web encyclopedia can no longer be edited at will by other internet users.

The change, known as "flagged revisions", will enable editors to adjudicate on any changes made to the Wikipedia pages of a living person before those changes go live...
For the full article go to:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/w ... icles.html
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