My old friend Delirium wrote:
I don't see how that differs from UseNet, which
has for decades
allowed anonymous postings, with no editor to stand behind them.
If you get libeled on usenet, well, that's just too bad, eh?
Post a rebuttal.
The difference is, of course, that when you and I contribute to
Wikipedia, we have the ambition to create something more lasting,
more reliable than a bunch of Usenet postings. It is still
unclear exactly what level of reliability we should expect out of
Wikipedia. It is probably lower than what people used to expect
of printed encyclopedias in previous centuries, but it should be
higher than most arguments thrown around in discussion forums.
On its front page, Wikipedia has the ambition to *be* a free
encyclopedia, and that might set expectations just a little higher
than can be achieved. To the core community the emphasis is on
"free," but many outside readers seem to focus on "encyclopedia."
This over-expectation is evident from Seigenthaler's piece, where
he writes:
: Wales, in a recent C-Span interview with Brian Lamb, insisted
: that his website is accountable and that his community of
: thousands of volunteer editors (he said he has only one paid
: employee) corrects mistakes within minutes.
I don't know what Jimbo might have said in that interview, but
apparently Seigenthaler took it to be some kind of guarantee that
every mistake will be corrected within minutes. I doubt that
Jimbo would ever promise anything like that.
And in this case, I don't see how ethical issues
enter into it
at all. If the biography is inaccurate, it should be edited,
The ethical part is that Seigenthaler's biography was not only
incorrect but also contained rather serious allegations. We
should probably be more careful to check facts when a person is
called a criminal. Many other errors can be less important.
Instead of a general requirement on sourcing every fact, I think
it would make sense to require sources to such allegations.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se