Chapter 1 of The Future of Reputation Available for Download

I recently placed Chapter 1 of my new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale Univ. Press, 2007) on SSRN. It can be downloaded for free.

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 12:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Is Wikipedia Cooling Off?

This newsgroup post, and its accompanying graphical material, makes the surprising claim that the Wikipedia community is less healthy than it used to be:

Since early this year, and for the first extended period in Wikipedia's history, the activity rate of the Wikipedia community has been declining. This can be seen in the rate of editing articles (-17%), the rate of new account registration (-25%), blocks (-30%), protections (-30%), uploads (-10%), article deletions (-25%), etc. Some exceptions are the article creation rate (+25%) and image deletions (+80%), but overall the community appears to be doing less now than it was 6 months ago.

If these data are reliable, you've got to wonder what happened. Is it the Essjay-related credibility problem, as the author of the post suggests, or is it a breakdown of Wikipedia's dispute resolution system? I'm tempted toward the latter explanation as at least a contributing factor, not least because it fits part of the story I'm writing in a jointly authored article about Wikipedia's dispute resolution process. (Previewed in this blog post.) In particular, the number of "reverts" is on the rise, reducing the value of thoughtful editing and community involvement. Revert wars, as a form of unproductive low-level conflict between users, are just what the dispute resolution system was designed to ameliorate.

Update: For more evidence of the thesis, check out this post from later in the same thread (emphasis added):

Personally, I would suggest that Wikipedia has indeed become more bureaucratic, and it will progress little further until a rethink of the core ideology is considered, particularly wrt. to how to derive/amend policy, core policy issues, handling bias or concepts of truth, dispute resolution and what to do when there isn't consensus (i.e. no consensus for the status quo, no consensus for proposed or active changes). The whole idea that Wikipedia acts by consensus is a sham. It's not a democracy of course either, it's not even anarchy, or specifically authority-driven(dictatorial). In individual cases it's whatever people can get away with. That's not a good concept of consensus (i.e. "what sticks is there by tacit agreement"); it ignores the fact that rational people will eventually give up rather than deal with bullies and morons.

Posted by Dave Hoffman at 03:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet

I'm very excited to announce that my new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy, is now hot off the presses! Copies are now in stock and available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble's website. Copies will hit bookstores in a few weeks.

From the book jacket:

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there’s a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives—often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false—will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with amazing examples of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy.

Daniel Solove, an authority on information privacy law, offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cybermobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for self-development and freedom. Long-standing notions of privacy need review, the author contends: unless we establish a balance between privacy and free speech, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.

For quite some time, I've been thinking about the issue of how to balance the privacy and free speech issues involved with blogging and social networking sites. In the book, I do my best to propose some solutions, but my primary goal is to spark debate and discussion. I'm aiming to reach as broad an audience as possible and to make the book lively yet educational. I hope I've achieved these goals.

I welcome any feedback. Please let me know what you think of the book, as I'd be very interested in your thoughts.

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 12:31 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Wikipedia, Consensus, and Truth (or at least Gary Coleman)

Dave's post on WikiScanner reminds me of an article last week in The Times about the other juicy revelations that Wiki-Scanner has uncovered, such as self-editing by the CIA, the Vatican, the British Labour Party, and a number of big corporations. The article goes on to argue:

There is no necessary reason that Wikipedia’s continual revisions enhance knowledge. It is quite as conceivable that an early version of an entry in Wikipedia will be written by someone who knows the subject, and later editors will dissipate whatever value is there. Wikipedia seeks not truth but consensus, and like an interminable political meeting the end result will be dominated by the loudest and most persistent voices.

This is a good (if a bit grumpy) criticism of the Wiki model. Wikis do seem to gravitate towards consensus, and as such are really efficient aggregators of facts. Where facts are not in dispute, Wikis do a fantastic job. For example, if you wish to learn about The Simpsons, Doctor Who, or the geneaology of the House of Windsor, Wikipedia is a great resource.

But for the important questions, it is quite different. Any time judgment or contested notions of truth come into play, people are quite naturally going to assert their own view of reality. Wikipedia is just another context (albeit a highly-manipulable one) in which these fights play out. In addition to consensus, money, energy, and persistence can affect how the "truth" is presented. It probably shouldn't be surprising that Wikipedia entries are being manipulated in this way. If anything, it's more surprising that people seem to believe that Wikipedia entries can give them easy truth on complicated questions that require judgment, reflection, interpretation, and thought. Even Encyclopedia Britannica can't do that, though it may be a little less subject to manipulation in the name of good PR. But then again, Britannica is probably not as strong on Gary Coleman's appearance on the Simpsons (episode 235, in case you were wondering).

Posted by Neil Richards at 01:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A Slow Day at the Office: Lawyers Editing on Wikipedia

[UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit and AbovetheLaw readers. While you are here, read some of my co-bloggers' great stuff on pirate politics, carbon off-sets, and Max Roach.]

WikiScanner is this week's killer-app. Prompted by a short post on Xoxohth, I decided to see whether our nation's busy law firm lawyers are spending their downtime editing Wikipedia entries. And, of course, they are. Of the thousands of edits I saw, I decided to focus on one topic matter: editing law firm webpages. Not surprisingly, law firms are using Wikipedia to burnish their reputations and trash their competitors. Here are a few examples:

Wachtell's edits (Editing Kramer Levin, Cravath, and Wachtell)

S&C's edits (editing S&C)

Skadden's edits (editing Jones Day and Skadden)

Baker's edits (editing Baker)

Jones Day's edits (editing Jones Day)

Latham's edits (editing Latham and Cravath)

Sidley's edits (editing Ropes, Sidley, and asserting that Sidley is a white shoe firm)

Shearman's edits (editing Shearman)

White and Case's edits (adding W&C as a white shoe firm)

Morgan's edits (editing Morgan)

Mayer Brown's edits (adding Mayer as a part of "Big Law")

Davis Polk's edits (editing Davis)

There is quite a bit more in these records. Honors go to the first reader who can find an edit by a lawfirm of a client's webpage that either deals with a then-pending legal dispute or offers a critique or negative comment.

Posted by Dave Hoffman at 11:23 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Spies and Wikipedia

Check out this bizarre story: a wikipedia administrator allegedly has distorted editing of the site's article on the Entebbe operation, because, this site alleges, she is a spy for an unidentified national government.

Believable? Who knows. I've got to think that a spy agency that spends its human capital editing wikipedia entries instead of, say, finding the nation's enemies and introducing them to targeted justice, has a misplaced set of priorities. Even if the agency were to suppress, in one medium, some aspect of the "truth" about its activities, the internet is like a vast gopher game: suppress a fact here, and it pops up there.

(h/t: Slashdot)

Posted by Dave Hoffman at 02:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

When Wikipedia Knows Something Too Soon

One of the virtues of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is that it can reflect new information very quickly after it becomes known. But there's a rather odd development in the case of wrestler Chris Benoit's murder of his family and suicide. From the AP:

Investigators are looking into who altered pro wrestler Chris Benoit's Wikipedia entry to mention his wife's death hours before authorities discovered the bodies of the couple and their 7-year-old son.

Benoit's Wikipedia entry was altered early Monday to say that the wrestler had missed a match two days earlier because of his wife's death.

A Wikipedia official, Cary Bass, said Thursday that the entry was made by someone using an Internet protocol address registered in Stamford, Connecticut, where World Wrestling Entertainment is based.

An IP address, a unique series of numbers carried by every machine connected to the Internet, does not necessarily have to be broadcast from where it is registered. The bodies were found in Benoit's home in suburban Atlanta, and it's not known where the posting was sent from, Bass said. . . .

Benoit's page on Wikipedia, a reference site that allows users to add and edit information, was updated at 12:01 a.m. Monday, about 14 hours before authorities say the bodies were found. The reason he missed a match Saturday night was "stemming from the death of his wife Nancy," it said.

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 08:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wiki-failure

In July of 2006, I argued here that the law review submission process would be aided by a Wiki. The purpose of the page: to collect information on submissions, accepted articles, board preferences, and other useful tips.

So I started a place where folks could work together to create a public good: lawreviews.wikispaces.com

A reader who is "a bit of a wiki-cynic" reminded me of the project recently. The page seems to have withered on the vine. What happened folks? Is this project less socially useful than, say, a description of the cell nucleus, today's featured Wikipedia article?

For what it is worth, Michael Froomkin's Law Review Copyright Wiki, while significantly better than my page in every way, also has been relatively under-edited.

Posted by Dave Hoffman at 10:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

From Right-of-Reply to Norm-of-Trackback

One of the things I love about the blogosphere is the way that comments let readers correct you or turn your attention to something you may have missed. One of my recent posts on copyright law illustrates how this process can work. James Grimmelmann has suggested that this right to comment, and to trackback to one's own post upon linking to another's post, is a big victory for free speech. While right-of-reply laws may be stymied by Miami Herald v. Tornillo, these innovations let everyone have their say.

Should the mainstream media adopt similar norms? Consider the case of a recent WSJ commentary entitled "The Innocence Myth," arguing that the rate of false convictions is very low. You can find critiques of it online if you google "innocence myth," and the WSJ does publish some skeptical letters to the editor. But my colleague Michael Risinger is about to publish a piece that he believes definitively refutes the WSJ piece. As he argues:

If one is at all serious about trying to determine the empirical truth about the magnitude of the wrongful conviction problem, one must make an attempt to associate the denominator with the same kind of cases represented in the numerator. . . . In an article now in galleys at Northwestern Law School’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, I have tried to do just that. Using only DNA exonerations for capital rape-murders from 1982 through 1989 as a numerator, and a 407-member sample of the 2235 capital sentences imposed during this period, this article shows that 21.45%, or around 479 of those, were cases of capital rape murder. Data supplied by the Innocence Project of Cardozo Law School and newly developed for this article show that only two-thirds of those cases would be expected to yield usable DNA for analysis. Combining these figures and dividing the numerator by the resulting denominator, a minimum factually wrongful conviction rate for capital rape-murder in the 1980’s emerges: 3.3%.

The WSJ has so far failed to publish Prof. Risinger's letter to the editor, and claims a policy against allowing responses to commentaries. But would it at least behoove the Journal to provide a link to Risinger's work after this opinion piece? I don't see how this could hurt. . . . especially given time already devoted to screening letters to the editor. The Journal could make the links inobtrusive, as it does in this fantastic article on predatory debt collectors.

I hope that more of the mainstream media (MSM) follows the lead of the Washington Post, which provides great links to blogs (and opportunities for comment) on virtually all of its online articles (including editorials). Perhaps "opening up" the letters to the editor section in this way will be a bit of a burden at the beginning. But as technology makes these online forums more permeable, the usual excuse of "space constraints" (for shutting out diverse views) will be less and less convincing.

Posted by Frank Pasquale at 06:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A Static and Authoritative Wikipedia

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.

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 12:08 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Cass Sunstein on Wikipedia and Collaborative Technologies

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"?

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 02:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

When Is It Appropriate to Cite to Wikipedia?

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.

1. From 59 Stan. L. Rev. 257, in a footnote: "For an overview of the use of modification or "mod" software in computer gaming, see generally Mod (Computer Gaming), WIKIPEDIA, http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod_%28computer_gaming%29."

2. From 116 Yale L.J. 226, in a footnote: "Between 1965 and 1974, the government of Sweden, a nation of roughly 4 million households, supervised the construction of 1 million housing units (the "Million Programme"), a majority of which were subsidized apartments. See Christopher Caldwell, Islam on the Outskirts of the Welfare State, N.Y. Times Mag., Feb. 5, 2006, at 55, 56; Wikipedia, Million Programme, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme (last visited Sept. 1, 2006)."

3. From 41 Ga. L. Rev. 1, in a footnote: "Spyware is malicious software that takes control of a user's computer for the benefit of a third party and can be used to surreptitiously monitor the user's online activity. Wikipedia, Spyware, http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware (last visited Aug. 25, 2006)."

4. From 10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 673, in a footnote: "For example, after premature and unverifiable claims of cold fusion by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were discredited, both Pons and Fleischmann were driven from their academic positions. See, e.g., Wikipedia, Stanley Pons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Pons (last visited Apr. 11, 2006) (noting that both Pons and Fleischmann moved to France and accepted jobs for the Toyota Corporation after their cold fusion work was discredited)."

5. From 4 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 223, in the text: "Ridgway, the most prolific serial killer in American history, pleaded guilty to forty-eight charges of aggravated first degree murder. King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng then congratulated himself: 'This agreement was the avenue to the truth. And in the end, the search for the truth is still why we have a criminal justice system.' [FN]" From the footnote: "See Wikipedia entry on Gary Ridgway, at http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Ridgway (last visited Mar. 23, 2006)."

6. From 37 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 753, in a footnote: "Ebert & Roeper gives a "Thumbs Up" (favorable review) or a "Thumbs Down" (unfavorable review). Wikipedia: Ebert & Roeper, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebert_&_ Roeper (last visited Feb. 6, 2006)."

7. From 79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 945, defining the term "netizen": "See Wikipedia, Netizen, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netizen (last visited May 19, 2006). A Netizen (a portmanteau of Internet and citizen), also known as a cybercitizen, is a person actively involved in online communities for the purpose of giving and receiving viewpoints, furnishing information, fostering the Internet as an intellectual and a social resource, and making choices for self-assembled communities. See id."

8. From 115 Yale L.J. 1699, in the text: "So perhaps he won't take offense if I call him a bricoleur, defined by Wikipedia as "a person who creates things from scratch, is creative and resourceful: a person who collects information and things and then puts them together in a way that they were not originally designed to do. [FN]" From the footnote: "Bricolage, in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricolage (last visited Dec. 7, 2005)."

The examples above include several by well-known law professors and a judge. I'm curious which citations readers find appropriate or inappropriate and why.

UPDATE: Mary Dudziak (law, USC) weighs in over at Legal History Blog about Wikipedia's accuracy in history articles.

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 01:54 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Colbert Takes on Wikipedia

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

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 12:02 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

The Political Wikipedia

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.

Posted by Deven Desai at 07:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Wikipedia Changes Its Open Editing Policy

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)

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 06:04 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Wikipedia in the Courts

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.

In light of the requirement that a finding of causation (or lack thereof) in such cases must be supported by “reliable medical or scientific evidence,” the Court of Federal Claims concluded that the articles that the special master introduced into the record “[did] not — at least on their face — remotely meet this reliability requirement”:

Consider the item on "febrile seizures" that she added from the Dictionary of Neurology, www.explore-medicine.com. Although that website no longer exists, the exhibit introduced by the Special Master indicates that its information was drawn from Wikipedia.com, a website that allows virtually anyone to upload an article into what is essentially a free, online encyclopedia. A review of the Wikipedia website reveals a pervasive and, for our purposes, disturbing series of disclaimers, among them, that: (i) any given Wikipedia article "may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: for example it could be in the middle of a large edit or it could have been recently vandalized;" (ii) Wikipedia articles are "also subject to remarkable oversights and omissions;" (iii) "Wikipedia articles (or series of related articles) are liable to be incomplete in ways that would be less usual in a more tightly controlled reference work;" (iv) "another problem with a lot of content on Wikipedia is that many contributors do not cite their sources, something that makes it hard for the reader to judge the credibility of what is written;" and (v) "many articles commence their lives as partisan drafts" and may be "caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint." The websites from which other articles introduced by the Special Master are drawn likewise warn that "the information provided herein should not be used . . . for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition," www.iowahealth.org; that the sponsor "does not recommend or endorse any specific . . . opinions, or other information that may be mentioned on the Site," www.webmd.com; or "makes no representation or warranty regarding the accuracy, reliability, completeness, currentness, or timeliness of the content, text or graphics" in its articles, www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus. And several of these websites caution that reliance on any information provided by the website is "solely at your risk," see, e.g., www.webmd.com.

Without an evidentiary hearing that “would have provided an opportunity for expert witnesses to corroborate or refute the information contained in the articles,” the court concluded, “ . . . reliance on these web materials involved an extraordinary risk that cannot be squared with the Special Master’s responsibility for conducting a proceeding consistent with the principles of fundamental fairness.”

Posted by Laura Heymann at 01:05 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Wikipedia, Politics, and Anonymity Don't Mix

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. . . .

When the Wikipedia entry for Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) noted that he had criticized the president, for example, someone modified it to say that Reid had "rightfully" criticized the president. . . .

A popular change in recent weeks has been deleting mentions of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) from politicians' profiles. Politically motivated edits aren't just coming from Capitol Hill; some comments are being traced back to other parts of political Washington, including the Justice Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Navy and Marines.

I continue to wonder why Wikipedia still accepts anonymous edits. I am generally a fan of anonymous speech, but perhaps anonymity is contributing more costs than benefits to Wikipedia. For one, the anonymity on Wikipedia is often a mirage, as people can frequently be tracked down via their IP addresses. Second, the value of anonymity depends upon context. Anonymity is valuable in encouraging people to express unpopular messages. But Wikipedia isn't designed as a forum for the free expression of opinions -- it is an encyclopedia. There are plenty of other places in cyberspace where people can express their views -- and where anonymity is very important. But I do not readily see the importance of anonymity to the Wikipedia project. Perhaps there are significant benefits I am missing, and if so, I hope readers will point them out.

UPDATE: Geoffrey Manne over at Truth on the Market has a post on this issue that's definitely worth reading.

Related Posts:
1. Wenger, Congress Takes Action on Wikipedia Abuse
2. Solove, Wikipedia Irony: Jimmy Wales Edits His Own Entry
3. Solove, Curtailing Anonymity on Wikipedia
4. More posts about Wikipedia are at our wiki archive page.

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 11:56 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Congress takes action on Wikipedia abuse . . .

. . . 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?

Posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger at 05:59 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Wikipedia Irony: Jimmy Wales Edits His Own Entry

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

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 11:06 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Welcome to the Google-Borg

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.

Posted by Greg Lastowka at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wikipedia Vandals

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:

Wikipedia inevitably will be overtaken by the gamers and the marketers to the point where it will lose all credibility.

Andrew Raff of IPTABlog writes:

Unless Wikipedia starts to implement a strong editorial policy, the entire project will become suspect because of entries like the one about Siegenthaler. Wikipedia is at a critical point in that it has enough entries and reputation that by continuing to allow anyone to edit any entry may harm the future development of the project.

This phenomenon is often at the heart of any open and free system -- it will invariably have to tighten up because of abuse. The key is finding the right balance of freedom and control. It's an age-old problem, of course, but the Internet raises it again in interesting ways.

For related posts on Wikipedia see the new category archive, Wiki.

Hat tip: NeXus

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 03:15 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

What Wikipedia Is (and Isn't)

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.

Yet I personally find searching the Web's messy data for specific terms, if not a good way to find authoritative information reliably, an extremely helpful step in my process of research. I would never cite to Wikipedia as an authority in my field. (E.g. for a definition of the Patriot Act.) But for certain purposes, e.g., providing a basic introduction to celebrities, I think it is okay.

I'm aware that many people think there is a serious problem with Wikipedia, but I think that problem is about misconceptions of Wikipedia and perceptions of others' misconceptions. For instance, Professor Anita Ramasastry a few days ago suggested that Section 230 should be modified to remove Wikipedia, partially, from its scope. Her reasoning:

It presents itself as an online encyclopedia - which has the connotation of reliability (and, in the past, edited content). We'd be foolish not to take blog postings with a grain of salt - but what about an article that is characterized as an encyclopedia entry? Unsurprisingly, many people are relying on the content as if it were correct and using the site as a reference tool. College students often cite to Wikipedia in their research papers, for example. In addition, Wikipedia is very influential. It ranks very highly in the major search engines. This means that Wikipedia's potential for inflicting damage is amplified by several orders of magnitude.

So Professor Ramasastry obviously knows what Wikipedia is -- her concern is just that other people don't. I suppose my question back is, whose problem should we make this "connotation of reliability"? If students believe everything in Wikipedia is true, can't we just tell them it isn't?

In a way, the current fuss over Wikipedia is very reminiscent of conversations I heard ten years ago about websites. It seemed many people were at pains to warn the public (and particularly "students") that everything you saw on a website was not true. Clueless people were out there posting crazy things on websites, spewing misinformation. Now, it seems, we all have internalized that fact and moved on -- such articles still pop up now and then, but not nearly as frequently. And--surprise!--it seems we're all still using the Web and we all find it pretty useful--perhaps more useful now than ever, given the improvements in powers of search and the greater amounts of data we can sift through. Yet behavior that we now agree is foolish (e.g. not taking facts offered on a random website with a grain of salt) was once deemed a significant problem.

Perhaps we might be a little more confident? Just as we figured out what the Web is (and isn't), I wonder if we will somehow manage to figure what Wikipedia is (and isn't) -- pretty much the same thing.

Posted by Greg Lastowka at 10:42 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Wikipedia vs. Britannica

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.

Hat tip: BoingBoing

Orin Kerr has some interesting reflections on Wikipedia here and here; and Eugene Volokh's thoughts on Wikipedia are also worth reading.

Related Posts
1. Solove, Wiki Art?
2. Solove, Wiki Thyself
3. Solove, Update on the Siegenthaler Wikipedia Defamation Case
4. Solove, Curtailing Anonymity on Wikipedia
5. Solove, Fake Biographies on Wikipedia
6. Solove, Suing Wikipedia
7. Solove, Wiki Your Papers?
8. Hoffman, Wex
9. Wenger, Wikimania

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 12:03 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Update on the Seigenthaler Wikipedia Defamation Case

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.

Related Posts:
1. Solove, Curtailing Anonymity on Wikipedia
2. Solove, Fake Biographies on Wikipedia
3. Solove, Suing Wikipedia
4. Solove, A Victory for Anonymous Blogging
5. Solove, Is Anonymous Blogging Possible?
6. Solove, Using Lawsuits to Unmask Anonymous Bloggers
7. Solove, Article III Groupie Disrobed: Thoughts on Blogging and Anonymity

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 09:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wiki Art?

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
3. Solove, Suing Wikipedia
4. Solove, Wiki Your Papers?
5. Hoffman, Wex
6. Wenger, Wikimania

Posted by Daniel J. Solove at 12:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Wiki Thyself

In a recent incident on Wiki