On 15/03/07, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Keith Old keithold@gmail.com Date: Mar 16, 2007 7:24 AM Subject: Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Oops (or, be careful when quoting Wikipedia in your newspaper, part 2) To: "unblock-en-l@wikipedia.org" unblock-en-l@wikipedia.org
G'day folks,
The Register which has never published anything positive about Wikipedia in its life published an interesting piece by Tom Melly (Username Tomandlu) about The Times allegedly using Wikipedia as a source for an article on his father George Melly.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/15/tom_melly_wikipedia_comment/
snip
Regards
Keith Old
Whether it is Wikipedia's responsibility to do something about it or not, the project is undisputably spreading disinformation not only across the Internet, but into printed media. The mirroring of old (but also some relatively stable) Wikipedia versions means that incorrect information can be visible for an unlimited amount of time. Undoubtedly elements of this are not Wikipedia's responsibility, for example those mirroring need to take responsibility, and arguably Google has such a presence and air of respectability that they should be more responsible about the fact that searches can easily throw up disinformation in spades well before anything sensible. You can't just hand wave and say "it's just technology" - people are responsible for running public services (in the case of Google, making a lot of money from it).
I don't think Wikipedia can absolve itself of all responsibility though. There needs to be clear acceptance that despite a drive towards improvement and "policies" re: verifiability, a lot of "facts" on Wikipedia are outright incorrect (and wrt. to bios for example, potentially libellious). And rather than just have stronger policies about what can be added to Wikipedia, there needs to be an official line of "don't believe us". And potentially stop calling ourselves an encyclopaedia, which gives a false sense of authority. Even if people should not act merely on authority, or use an encyclopaedia as primary reference, they do.
Zoney