Wikipedia Debate Intensifies

By: Jay DeFoore Since last Monday's Op-Ed in USA Today in which John Seigenthaler Sr. criticizes Wikipedia as a "flawed and irresponsible research tool" (see E&P's "The Dangers of Wikipedia"), the citizen media site's many supporters and detractors have begun a serious debate.

In an interview with New York Times media writer Katharine Q. Seelye, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says that he is trying to shore up some of the problems in the Wikipedia model.

"He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles," Seelye writes. "The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems.

"In addition, he said, Wikipedia may start blocking unregistered users from creating new pages, though they would still be able to edit them."

Since Seigenthaler came forward with his complaints, another Wikipedia entry has been called into question. Internet columnist Frank Barnako writes for Marketwatch.com that former MTV vee-jay Adam Curry, "arguably the man who fueled the podcast phenomenon thru his own self promotion, has been accused of tampering with Wikipedia.org's podcasting entry."

The charge was first levied by Rogers Cadenhead, author of several books about Java programming and Web publishing tools, on his blog: "Adam Curry appears to have been caught anonymously editing the podcasting entry on Wikipedia to remove credit from other people and inflate his role in it's creation."

Curry admits to changing the entry on his own blog, and explains his version of events in his latest podcast.

Also, one of citizen media's biggest defenders, Buzzmachine blogger Jeff Jarvis, recommends that someone "create a superstructure of known, proven editors and researchers not to replace a single thing about Wikipedia today but to add value on top of it."

Below are the latest reader comments on the Wikipedia debate. If you care to weigh in, e-mail E&P's Online Editor, Jay DeFoore.

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Where's the Fair Play?

Jimmy Wales's assertion that Wikipedia operates a self-correcting mechanism pays mere lip service to fair play.

The right to edit an entry represents no right of reply if a subsequent visitor to an "amended" entry goes in and rewrites it yet further (have you *tried* to decipher amendments in its History files?).

Wales and those who run Wikipedia are not only arrogant but naive. A year ago I posted my views as a footnote to an utterly factually wrong entry on a specialist subject in which I have been an active participant. I declined to "edit" the existing entry, saying that the Wikipedia ideal was flawed: any entry is only as good as the last pair of hands to edit it, which guarantees nothing. In any case I'd have had to completely rewrite the item in question, which betrayed its authors to be secondary sources.

Weeks later my comment was removed to the bowels of Wikipedia's history, as was a second critical footnote I submitted earlier this year. The original incorrect entry stands to this day.

Julia Stitch
United Kingdom

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It seems as though many people who wrote Mr. DeFoore missed the point of his article. Successful journalism exists when accuracy is the number one priority.

I don't see it as the responsibility of the accused to do the fact checking for the accuser. Who cares how easy Wikipedia is to edit. If someone writes that someone else has a history of deviant behavior, isn't it up to the writer to provide proof of the accusation?

Without controls the system will run amok. As it clearly did in the case outlined by Mr. DeFoore.

Dean Friend

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So, what if this John guy WAS thought to be a suspect in Kennedy's assassination? I know nothing about the validity of that, but it does bring up the flip side of the discussion: How much information in Wikipedia, such as in this example an historical opinion ("he was thought to have been directly involved..."), has been removed by people protecting their reputations or advancing differing opinions?

Heather Hopp