[Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

[Delirium]

Delirium wrote:

> I don't, in general, see a problem with this.  If something is 
> incorrect in any way, it should be corrected or removed (whether it is 
> libelous or not is irrelevant---non-libelous misinformation has no 
> place either).

I should add that, from both an ethical and legal perspective, this is 
pretty much exactly how all other publicly-editable forums works.  If 
someone posts a libelous message on an AOL message board, or in a 
livejournal, or anywhere else, it will be removed by the service 
provider upon complaint, but if nobody complains, there is no editorial 
mechanism that vets such messages and proactively removes them.  
Wikipedia is much the same---we just make the process easier by letting 
you go in and remove the offending message yourself rather than forcing 
you to file a formal complaint.

Now in the future we do want to start marking articles with some 
indication of how much they've been vetted, so it will be easier to 
figure out whether an article's status is more like "nobody has even 
looked at this except the person who posted it, and it may well be 
completely made-up" to "a few hundred trusted editors have looked at 
this and believe it is, to the best of our knowledge, accurate, so there 
is a pretty good chance it is at least mostly accurate".

-Mark