Archive for the ‘Wiki’ Category
A Static and Authoritative Wikipedia
posted by Daniel Solove
Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, is coming out in a static version on CD. According to the AP:
Wikipedia’s advocates like to tout its dynamic nature: Volunteers can quickly respond to new developments and errors in the collaborative online encyclopedia by adding or changing entries themselves.
So it may seem odd that Wikipedia volunteers are now working on a static version on CD, a preliminary version of which was released earlier this month.
The goal is to extend Wikipedia to those with limited or no Internet access. Success with the CD could ultimately lead to Wikipedia in book or other forms. . . .
The development comes as the Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 36 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have consulted Wikipedia — 8 percent on any given day. The telephone-based study issued Tuesday also found Wikipedia usage higher among college graduates and younger Internet users. . . .
Since its founding in 2001, the reference has grown to more than 1.7 million articles in the English language alone.
The Wikipedia CD will have only a subset of that — about 2,000 articles, with a heavy emphasis on geography, literature and other topics that won’t change much the way current events and controversial subjects might.
This development got me thinking of an idea that could help solve two of the biggest problems of Wikipedia: (1) since anybody can edit an entry, there’s often information of dubious reliability; and (2) entries frequently change as they are edited and updated, thus making any citation (gasp!) to Wikipedia even more problematic since the facts being cited to might no longer exist in the entry.
These problems are especially important because Wikipedia is being widely cited in scholarship and judicial opinions.
The solution?
Wikipedia should create “approved” static versions of certain articles, which do not readily change and which are reviewed and approved by a professional editor or expert. In other words, Wikipedia could select special editors with expertise in certain areas, vet their credentials, and have them do a thorough edit of an entry. The entry would then be frozen as a special version. People could still edit and change the entry, but the special version would be readily available for those who wanted to rely on the entry for citation purposes.
Wikipedia already comes close to doing this. It has certain trusted editors and it does archive older versions of entries. But to make Wikipedia reliable enough to cite, some changes have to be made. A good system must be developed to ensure that trusted editors have the appropriate expertise — Wikipedia must avoid being conned by a charlatan. And it must be easy to find the expert-approved entry, which must be stable and free from modification after the expert reviewer has edited and approved it. With these changes, these special Wikipedia entries might be reliable enough to cite.
April 25, 2007 at 12:08 am
Posted in: Wiki
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Cass Sunstein on Wikipedia and Collaborative Technologies
posted by Daniel Solove
Professor Cass Sunstein (U. Chicago Law School) has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post about Wikipedia and other collaborative technologies. I recently blogged about the extensive citation to Wikipedia in law review articles and judicial opinions, but I find this statistic that Sunstein provides to be quite amazing:
In the past year, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that “anyone can edit,” has been cited four times as often as the Encyclopedia Britannica in judicial opinions, and the number is rapidly growing.
He goes on to write about prediction markets:
But wikis are merely one way to assemble dispersed knowledge. The number of prediction markets has also climbed over the past decade. These markets aggregate information by inviting people to “bet” on future events — the outcome of elections, changes in gross domestic product, the likelihood of a natural disaster or an outbreak of avian flu.
In general, the results have proved stunningly accurate. For elections, market forecasts have consistently outperformed experts and even public opinion polls. (If you want to learn who is likely to win the Oscars, check out the Hollywood Stock Exchange at http://www.hsx.com.) Many companies, such as Google, Eli Lilly and Microsoft, have created internal prediction markets for product launches, office openings, sales levels and more. At Google, which has disclosed some of its data, the aggregation of dispersed information has yielded remarkably reliable forecasts.
Although recognizing some of the shortcomings of Wikipedia and other collaborative technologies such as prediction markets, Sunstein is generally quite optimistic:
But the track record of the new collaborations suggests that they have immense potential. In just a few years, Wikipedia has become the most influential encyclopedia in the world, consulted by judges as well as those who cannot afford to buy books. If the past is prologue, we’re seeing the tip of a very large iceberg.
While I agree that collaborative technologies are a very exciting and useful development, I wonder whether Sunstein is a bit too optimistic. Is Wikipedia really “the most influential encyclopedia in the world”? Are prediction markets “stunningly accurate”?
February 24, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Posted in: Wiki
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When Is It Appropriate to Cite to Wikipedia?
posted by Daniel Solove
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anybody can edit, is frequently getting cited by courts and academics. The New York Times reports:
A simple search of published court decisions shows that Wikipedia is frequently cited by judges around the country, involving serious issues and the bizarre — such as a 2005 tax case before the Tennessee Court of Appeals concerning the definition of “beverage” that involved hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, just this week, a case in Federal District Court in Florida that involved the term “booty music” as played during a wet T-shirt contest.
More than 100 judicial rulings have relied on Wikipedia, beginning in 2004, including 13 from circuit courts of appeal, one step below the Supreme Court. (The Supreme Court thus far has never cited Wikipedia.)
“Wikipedia is a terrific resource,” said Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago. “Partly because it so convenient, it often has been updated recently and is very accurate.” But, he added: “It wouldn’t be right to use it in a critical issue. If the safety of a product is at issue, you wouldn’t look it up in Wikipedia.”
Paul Caron writes:
I asked my crack research assistant, Drew Marksity, to determine how many times law professors have cited Wikipedia in law review articles. Using Westlaw’s JLR database, Drew found that 545 articles cite Wikipedia. (An additional 125 articles mention Wikipedia but do not cite it as authority.)
Brian Leiter writes:
[Caron] discreetly, does not list the names of the authors of these articles, all of whom should presumably be blacklisted from scholarly careers (unless, of course, the citation was in the context of, “Wikipedia reflects the popular prejudice that…” or “Wikipedia records this error as though it were fact, proving yet again the unreliability of the Internet…” or “In this instance, actual scholarly sources confirm what Wikipedia reports…”).
Inside Higher Ed reports that some schools are barring students from citing to Wikipedia:
While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it, the history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand. It voted this month to bar students from citing the Web site as a source in papers or other academic work. All faculty members will be telling students about the policy and explaining why material on Wikipedia — while convenient — may not be trustworthy.
When is it appropriate to cite to Wikipedia?
I am generally against categorical bans, as the issue really depends upon the context. I did a search of some of the Westlaw citations, and below the fold I’ll list a few.
February 5, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Posted in: Law School (Scholarship), Wiki
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Colbert Takes on Wikipedia
posted by Daniel Solove
If you’re in the mood for some wiki humor, check out this hilarious segment where Stephen Colbert makes fun of Wikipedia. Apparently, the folks at Wikipedia didn’t find it very funny. Colbert’s Wikipedia account got blocked later on.
Hat tip: Google Blogoscoped
August 2, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Posted in: Humor, Wiki
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The Political Wikipedia
posted by Deven Desai
Confused about the latest Propositions on the ballot? Wonder who the heck is on Team America? What is the One America Committee? And to what the Center for Responsive Politics responds?
Jimmy Wales has come to the rescue and declared independence from the hurly-burly of FoxNews, CNN, talk radio, and the like by launching Campaigns Wikia.
He declares: “I am launching today a new Wikia website aimed at being a central meeting ground for people on all sides of the political spectrum who think that it is time for politics to become more participatory, and more intelligent.”
And in what strikes me as a Yocahi Benkler-evoking moment Wales writes:
This website, Campaigns Wikia, has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.
Together, we will start to work on educating and engaging the political campaigns about how to stop being broadcast politicians, and how to start being community and participatory politicians.
So what do you all think? Can a Wiki or Wiki approach change the way politics runs in the U.S.? While you formulate your answer note there is an irony here. Remember that a little while back Wikipedia changed its anyone can edit policy to have protected and semi-protected pages. Furthermore, Wikipedia had to investigate and block edits from certain Congressional IP addresses precisely because the politicians has been editing content with spin and the like.
There is also the question of just how well Wikipedia and the Wiki method work. I will get to that after I have read some articles I have found that tackle the question in an engaged way and I think merit some reflection.
July 6, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Posted in: Technology, Wiki
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Wikipedia Changes Its Open Editing Policy
posted by Daniel Solove
The New York Times reports:
Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that “anyone can edit.” Unless you want to edit the entries on Albert Einstein, human rights in China or Christina Aguilera. . . .
The list changes rapidly, but as of yesterday, the entries for Einstein and Ms. Aguilera were among 82 that administrators had “protected” from all editing, mostly because of repeated vandalism or disputes over what should be said. Another 179 entries — including those for George W. Bush, Islam and Adolf Hitler — were “semi-protected,” open to editing only by people who had been registered at the site for at least four days. (See a List of Protected Entries)
While these measures may appear to undermine the site’s democratic principles, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, notes that protection is usually temporary and affects a tiny fraction of the 1.2 million entries on the English-language site.
The writing was on the wall that Wikipedia would have to put more restrictions on the editing of articles. I think that these changes are a nice balance between an open editing policy and controlling against abuses. Perhaps the next step is to create a group of “trusted editors,” who will always be allowed to edit, and then have certain restrictions for anonymous editors.
Related Posts:
1. Solove, Wikipedia, Politics, and Anonymity Don’t Mix (Feb. 2006)
2. Solove, Wikipedia Irony: Jimmy Wales Edits His Own Entry (Dec. 2005)
3. Solove, Wikipedia Vandals (Dec. 2005)
June 17, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Posted in: Wiki
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Wikipedia in the Courts
posted by Laura Heymann
In an earlier post, I suggested that students may be competent searchers of information on the Internet but may need more guidance in assessing the relative worth of the information they find. Turns out students aren’t the only ones in need of guidance. In an opinion released in February, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims scolded a special master in a vaccine injury case for sua sponte supplementing the record with “medical ‘articles’ on afebrile seizures” that she located on the Internet.
April 21, 2006 at 1:05 am
Posted in: Wiki
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Wikipedia, Politics, and Anonymity Don’t Mix
posted by Daniel Solove
The Washington Post has an article today about the recent instances of employees of various politicians editing Wikipedia entries:
This is what passes for an extreme makeover in Washington: A summer intern for seven-term Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) altered the congressman’s profile on the Wikipedia Web site to remove an old promise that he would limit his service to four terms.
Someone doctored Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s (D-W.Va.) profile on the site to list his age as 180. (He is 88.) An erroneous entry for Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed that he “was voted the most annoying senator by his peers in Congress.”
Last week, Wikipedia temporarily blocked certain Capitol Hill Web addresses from altering any entries in the otherwise wide-open forum. Wikipedia is a vast, growing information database written and maintained solely by volunteers. In December, the database received 4.7 million edits from viewers, of which a relatively small number — “a couple of thousand,” according to founder Jimmy Wales — constituted vandalism. . . .
February 4, 2006 at 11:56 am
Posted in: Wiki
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Congress takes action on Wikipedia abuse . . .
posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger
. . . but not the kind of action you might be thinking. A law against Wikipedia abuse? An investigation? A blue-ribbon panel? Nope — our fearless political leaders have decided to take up the rallying cry “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Declan McCullagh has the story (via my sharp-eyed, non-Wikipedia-abusing colleague Deven Desai):
The trusty editors at Wikipedia got together and compiled a list of over 1,000 edits made by Internet addresses allocated to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The IP address subsequently was blocked and unblocked.
An extensive analysis reveals how juvenile official Washington secretly is, behind the mind-numbingly serious talk of public policy.
One edit listed White House press secretary Scott McClellan under the entry for “douche.” Another said of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma) that: “Coburn was voted the most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress. This was due to Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag.”
It boggles the mind to think that Congress is abusing Wikipedia. I mean, if we can’t trust Congress, and we can’t trust Wikipedia . . . my goodness — who can we trust?
January 31, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Posted in: Technology, Wiki
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Wikipedia Irony: Jimmy Wales Edits His Own Entry
posted by Daniel Solove
A story in Wired reveals that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has been editing his own Wikipedia entry:
Public edit logs reveal that Wales has changed his own Wikipedia bio 18 times, deleting phrases describing former Wikipedia employee Larry Sanger as a co-founder of the site.
The changes were reported Monday by technology writer Rogers Cadenhead on his blog, Workbench, spurring Sanger to launch a dialogue on Wikipedia about revisionist history.
In an interview with Wired News, Wales acknowledged he’s made changes to his bio, but said the edits were made to correct factual errors and provide a more rounded version of events.
While he said that Wikipedia generally frowns on people editing entries about themselves, there is no hard and fast rule against it.
“People shouldn’t do it, including me,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t done it. It’s in poor taste…. People have a lot of information about themselves but staying objective is difficult. That’s the trade-off in editing entries about yourself…. If you see a blatant error or misconception about yourself, you really want to set it straight.”
According to technology writer Cadenhead, who ferreted out the record of changes, Wales has altered sentences that gave Larry Sanger credit for co-founding Wikipedia seven times.
Recently, Adam Curry got shamed across the blogosphere for editing part of an entry pertaining to himself.
Should people be editing or creating entries for themselves in Wikipedia?
On the one hand, people’s self-interest might prevent them from editing objectively. People also might use Wikipedia as a kind of vanity press of sorts, creating entries about themselves filled with praise. I’m actually surprised that there isn’t more of this going on, as it can be quite flattering to have an entry for oneself or one’s organization in Wikipedia.
One the other hand, who knows better about Jimmy Wales than Jimmy Wales? If the people actually involved in various entries are shamed into not being able to edit them, we lose a valuable source of information.
Related Posts:
1. Wiki Thyself
2. Other posts about Wikipedia are collected in the Wiki Category Archive
December 20, 2005 at 11:06 am
Posted in: Wiki
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Welcome to the Google-Borg
posted by Greg Lastowka
USAToday.com is running a banner headline today for an article: “Google becoming an auxiliary brain.” Here’s the article, and here’s the thesis of the reporter, Elizabeth Weise:
If we are the sum total of our knowledge and experiences, then the Internet is a collection of other people’s knowledge and experiences. And Google — so ubiquitous that it has become its own verb — allows us to tap into that collection.
I generally enjoyed reading this, and it’s way too easy to nitpick USA Today, but here are a few reactions:
1) It’s a pretty clear example of the cyborg trope isn’t it? Google isn’t billed as just a novel information source, like a television, it’s billed as a “brain” — a technological extension of human biology. And like the brain of the Star Trek Borg, it is a collective mind we now share. This collective brain-sharing is billed not as scary, but nifty.
2) Despite the excerpt above, if you read this, Google appears to be getting a great deal of credit for the Web itself. Throughout, Weise’s language makes this an article about Google as information repository, not as search provider. To be clear: Larry, Serge, and company built a great search tool that helps you find information that other people put on the Web (and one that hands you an advertisement along the way).
3) In somewhat of a contradiction, it appears that people who provide information on the Web are not to be trusted. Weise quotes a research librarian from Georgia:
And even when malicious intent isn’t the problem, mastery of a subject can be, says Jacobson. “The opinions that get heard are from people who have a lot of time to create websites, not necessarily the people with the best information.”
Can’t trust those people who have time to create websites, can you? Oh wait — isn’t that the definition of my Googlebrain? What is curious is that the answer seems to be no, because this comment doesn’t follow the discussion of Google, but… Wikipedia. So Wikipedia is less trustworthy than the Web (aka “Google”)? Oh well.
Further reading: Danah Boyd on the Seigenthaler fuss.
December 19, 2005 at 10:44 am
Posted in: Google & Search Engines, Wiki
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Wikipedia Vandals
posted by Daniel Solove
According to The Times (UK), a group of vandals have been attacking Wikipedia deliberately adding in falsehoods to articles:
[There has been a] surge in the number of spoof articles and vandal attacks which have followed the furore over a biographical Wikipedia article linking John Seigenthaler, a respected retired journalist, with the assassinations of both John F and Robert Kennedy.
In one such fake article, it was suggested today that Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s creator, was shot dead at his home by Siegenthaler’s wife.
This is most unfortunate. That’s the problem when you have something open and free — anybody can abuse the system. In an interesting post, Eric Goldman predicts the demise of Wikipedia:
December 18, 2005 at 3:15 pm
Posted in: Wiki
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What Wikipedia Is (and Isn’t)
posted by Greg Lastowka
In light of the recent discussions here of Wikipedia, I’d like to throw in my two cents on the subject.
I like Wikipedia. In fact, I like it a lot. In fact, I have gone so far as to do what Eugene Volokh warned against — I’ve actually cited to Wikipedia. In fact, I cited to Wikipedia six times in a recently published law review article. (I’m not alone in this by any means–”wikipedia” gets over 200 hits on a Lexis search of law review articles, almost all of which are cites to entries.) In my case, I cited Wikipedia as a starting point for investigating personalities, such as John Mellencamp, Tom Clancy, and Marni Nixon. I’m aware that some of these entries contain certain inaccuracies, but I feel comfortable citing to them for reasons I’ll explain below. In the alternative, I suppose I could have cited to nothing (not very helpful to the reader) or cited to books (realistically, though, how many people would follow up on those cites?). Also, I should admit that, in part, I cite to Wikipedia sometimes because I hope some readers might take a look at Wikipedia and appreciate it for what it is. However, I’m not trying to deceive people about what Wikipedia is–it is, more or less, the Web, repackaged and reformatted.
In fact, before I cited to Wikipedia, I cited, on rare occasions and for very similar reasons, to web searches on Google for a specific term. (Again, I’m not alone in this, though the numbers of people who did this were smaller.) As far as I’m concerned, citing to a Wikipedia entry for Marni Nixon and a Google search for Marni Nixon are very nearly the same thing. Both are invitations to the reader to enter what you might call a “muddy information portal,” a messy and organic field of data that the citing author does not control, but feels would be helpful to the reader as a starting point for further research. Citing to something like that might be unorthodox, yes, but I don’t think it is beyond the pale.
To my mind, the difference between citing Wikipedia and citing a Web search is just a matter of the target’s format. When we search the Web, Google creates our “entry” on the fly with algorithms that prioritize popular and relevant websites. With Wikipedia, we have the dynamic of Web search somewhat inverted — creators with data they consider relevant to specific terms offer up that data to Wikipedia under a shared hosting umbrella in a common format (and with a commitment to collaboration). Due to this, Wikipedia entries generally look nicer. But other than that, Wikipedia and the World Wide Web are very nearly the same thing. Wikipedia’s openess, to both creation and revision, doesn’t guarantee much accuracy.
December 16, 2005 at 10:42 am
Posted in: Wiki
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Wikipedia vs. Britannica
posted by Daniel Solove
In a study by Nature, a science journal, expert reviewers found Wikipedia science entries to be not much less accurate than Encyclopaedia Britannica entries:
[A]n expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica’s coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.
The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.
Here’s how the study was done:
In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature’s news team.
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.
One could view the results as reflecting well on Wikipedia. One could also view them as as reflecting very badly on Britannica.
December 15, 2005 at 12:03 am
Posted in: Wiki
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Update on the Seigenthaler Wikipedia Defamation Case
posted by Daniel Solove
Paul Secunda over at Workplace Prof Blog brings news about an update to the Seigenthaler Wikipedia defamation case I blogged about recently. In the case, an anonymous individual wrote in Seigenthaler’s Wikipedia entry that Seigenthaler was involved in President Kennedy’s assassination. Seigenthaler complained that he was unable to track down the identity of the alleged defamer.
Enter Daniel Brandt, who earlier had complained about information in his Wikipedia profile he claimed was false. I blogged about Brandt’s case a while back. According to the New York Times:
Using information in Mr. Seigenthaler’s article and some online tools, Mr. Brandt traced the computer used to make the Wikipedia entry to the delivery company in Nashville. Mr. Brandt called the company and told employees there about the Wikipedia problem but was not able to learn anything definitive.
Mr. Brandt then sent an e-mail message to the company, asking for information about its courier services. A response bore the same Internet Protocol address that was left by the creator of the Wikipedia entry, offering further evidence of a connection.
Paul Secunda nicely explains what happened next:
Chase later resigned from his job because he did not want to cause problems for his company. Seigenthaler has urged Chase’s boss to rehire him, but so far Chase is still without a job.
Oh, the wrath of bloggers!
More details at the NY Times article and at Paul Secunda’s post.
December 11, 2005 at 9:40 am
Posted in: Anonymity, First Amendment, Privacy, Wiki
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Wiki Art?
posted by Daniel Solove
A new website called Swarm Sketch allows people to create a sketch in wiki fashion:
SwarmSketch is an ongoing online canvas that explores the possibilities of distributed design by the masses. Each week it randomly chooses a popular search term which becomes the sketch subject for the week. In this way, the collective is sketching what the collective thought was important each week. . . .
Each user can contribute a small amount of line per visit, then they are given the opportunity to vote on the opacity of lines submitted by other users. By voting, users moderate the input of other users, judging the quality of each line. The darkness of each line is the average of all its previous votes.
The sketch included in this post is entitled “Cell Phone Bandit.” You can browse the other artwork here, including a rather vulgar picture of Jessica Simpson’s wedding. Let’s just say that wiki is no Picasso.
Hat tip: Google Blogoscoped
Related Posts:
1. Solove, Curtailing Anonymity on Wikipedia
2. Solove, Fake Biographies on Wikipedia
5. Hoffman, Wex
December 10, 2005 at 12:07 am
Posted in: Technology, Wiki
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Wiki Thyself
posted by Daniel Solove
In a recent incident on Wikipedia, Adam Curry, a former MTV VJ, was accused of editing an entry on Wikipedia on podcasting to enhance his role in the origins of podcasting. According to a CNET article:
Essentially, Curry is accused of anonymously editing out information in the article that discusses some others’ roles in the creation of the technology while at the same time pumping up his own role.
In particular, he was said to have entirely deleted sections of the article, which addressed innovations originally talked about by Technorati principal engineer Kevin Marks.
“At the first Harvard BloggerCon conference,” in 2003, the original Wikipedia language began, “Kevin Marks demonstrated a script to download RSS enclosures to iTunes and synchronise them onto an iPod, something Adam Curry had been doing with Radio Userland and Applescript.”
But then an anonymous user–who was traced back to Curry via the IP address–deleted the Marks section.
According to another CNET article, Curry believed that the information he deleted was wrong. It wasn’t, and Curry admitted making a mistake. The CNET article raises the issue of whether people should be permitted to create or edit entries on issues where they have a personal interest:
December 5, 2005 at 3:23 pm
Posted in: Anonymity, Privacy, Technology, Wiki
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Curtailing Anonymity at Wikipedia
posted by Daniel Solove
A few days ago, I blogged about an incident involving a defamatory biography on Wikipedia about John Seigenthaler Sr. According to a New York Times story:
The whole nonprofit enterprise began in January 2001, the brainchild of Jimmy Wales, 39, a former futures and options trader who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla. He said he had hoped to advance the promise of the Internet as a place for sharing information.
It has, by most measures, been a spectacular success. Wikipedia is now the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. As of Friday, it was receiving 2.5 billion page views a month, and offering at least 1,000 articles in 82 languages. The number of articles, already close to two million, is growing by 7 percent a month. And Mr. Wales said that traffic doubles every four months.
Still, the question of Wikipedia, as of so much of what you find online, is: Can you trust it?
According to the article, Wales is planning to address these problems:
December 5, 2005 at 2:01 pm
Posted in: Anonymity, Privacy, Wiki
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Fake Biographies on Wikipedia
posted by Daniel Solove
Most of us would be quite flattered to find an entry about us on the Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia where anybody can create or edit an entry. Not so for John Seigenthaler. His Wikipedia bio said:
John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960′s. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.
In a USA Today editorial Seigenthaler begins by quoting the false bio and then writes:
I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious “biography” that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable. . . .
At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy’s administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and Answers.com.
Seigenthaler explains how he tried to track down the person who posted the information:
December 1, 2005 at 11:24 am
Posted in: Anonymity, First Amendment, Privacy, Wiki
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Wex
posted by Dave Hoffman
Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute recently launched WEX, “a collaboratively built, freely available legal dictionary and encyclopedia.” Sounds peachy. What is it?
According to an email which has been circulating from the Tom Bruce, Director of the LII [who kindly gave me permission to quote]:
At the risk of sounding a little more diffident than perhaps I should, I’ll say that we’ve just put something sorta new and very interesting on the LII site. It’s called WEX, and we are hoping that it will grow into a very ambitious and interesting project indeed — interesting and ambitious enough that we should be trumpeting it from the housetops, I suppose, but for the moment we’re confining ourselves to low-key conversations with our friends and supporters. Hence this note.
WEX . . . will be the first collaboratively edited legal encyclopedia and dictionary on the web, aimed specifically at law novices.
November 18, 2005 at 8:55 pm
Posted in: Technology, Wiki
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