LOL. Can you say "scapegoat"?
biblio
--- On Tue, 7/28/09, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
From: Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rorschach wars continue To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 9:58 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/technology/internet/29inkblot.html
"Has Wikipedia Created a Rorschach Cheat Sheet?"
' Yet in the last few months, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been engulfed in a furious debate involving psychologists who are angry that the 10 original Rorschach plates are reproduced online, along with common responses for each. For them, the Wikipedia page is the equivalent of posting an answer sheet to next year’s SAT.
They are pitted against the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia’s users, who share the site’s “free culture” ethos, which opposes the suppression of information that it is legal to publish. (Because the Rorschach plates were created nearly 90 years ago, they have lost their copyright protection in the United States.)' ... 'Trudi Finger, a spokeswoman for Hogrefe & Huber Publishing, the German company that bought an early publisher of Hermann Rorschach’s book, said in an e-mail message last week: “We are assessing legal steps against Wikimedia,” referring to the foundation that runs the Wikipedia sites. Skip to next paragraph
“It is therefore unbelievably reckless and even cynical of Wikipedia,” she said, “to on one hand point out the concerns and dangers voiced by recognized scientists and important professional associations and on the other hand — in the same article — publish the test material along with supposedly ‘expected responses.’ ”
Mike Godwin, the general counsel at Wikimedia, hardly sounded concerned, saying he “had to laugh a bit” at the legal and ethical arguments made in the statement from Hogrefe.
Hogrefe licenses a number of companies in the United States to sell the plates along with interpretative material. One such distributor, Western Psychological Services, sells the plates themselves for $110 and a larger kit for $185.'
I'm starting to think maybe the Signpost or Foundation should start soliciting donations from Noam Cohen - he only ever seems to write based on them...