Wednesday, November 30, 2005

A Show Of Support

This links to a column appearing in USA Today from a man named John Seigenthaler, who takes issue with Wikipedia for a “biography” of him that turned out to be patently false.

This caught my attention partly because I have links to Wikipedia all over the place on this site. I have no reason not to believe that the Wikipedia links contain information about anyone that is incorrect. I use these links to supplement something I have decided to write about already. If I saw something on Wikipedia that I didn’t know about beforehand, I would check other sources anyway to see if it is correct.

I’m sorry that Mr. Seigenthaler had this experience, and I cannot possibly imagine who would stoop so low as do perform a dirty trick on him like this. I wish him luck in trying to determine the guilty party.

However, I still believe that Wikipedia is a reliable site, and until I receive evidence to the contrary, I will continue to believe that that is true.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not only should you check every one of your Wikipedia cites, but you should check all of them every day. You never know when someone will come along and sabotage one of the articles.

I tried for six weeks to get my bio deleted. I was unsuccessful. My case is not as libelous as Mr. Seigenthaler's, nor am I nearly as influential as he is. But I learned a lot about what he must have gone through, and I sympathize with him completely.

doomsy said...

Interesting...I'll keep that in mind. Thanks.