Tag Archives: Reference

Wikipedia Goes to Washington

All this stuff about people obsessively airbrushing their Wikipedia biographies is getting out of hand. In December we heard that even Jimmy Wales himself, the guy who has done more than anyone else to make Wikipedia what it is now, was not above tweaking the entry on himself. My conclusion then was that Of course,… Read More »

Wikipedia, Sex Offenders, Dukes and Good Journalism

Another twist to the whole discussion about accuracy on Wikipedia, as well as the news that some individuals obsessively monitor and tweak their biographies on the site: the ABC reports that Student Reporters Expose ‘Royal’ Sex Offender: Student reporters at a Minnesota high school exposed a prospective transfer who said he was a member of… Read More »

Wikipedia, Porn and the Airbrushing of History

An intriguing part of the story about Wikipedia and John Seigenthaler, the maligned journalist who found his Wikipedia biography had him as a JFK assassination suspect, is that the savvy folk obsessively monitor their own Wikipedia biographies, including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales himself who has edited it frequently, removing references to a credited “co-founder” of… Read More »

The Last Chapter in the Wikipedia Tale?

So we now know who was behind the Wikipedia Seigenthaler entry : the prankster has confessed. It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker quitting his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility. A man in Nashville, Tenn., has admitted… Read More »

The Lessons of Wikipedia

The Seigenthaler/Wikipedia case is attracting attention from strange quarters. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s fodder for pondering on the nature of truth, falsehood and deliberate obfuscation. From OfficialWire, there’s this piece: “It’s Your Story…You Tell It Anyway You Want On Wikipedia”: After four months, Seigenthaler was finally able to get Wales to… Read More »