[WikiEN-l] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Steve Bennett wrote:


> And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important?
> Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference
> between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the
> gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for
> producing useful free images?
>   
Heh, thinking about it, I *will* swallow the bait. :-)

Let me tell you a real story from my own life...

But before I do that, let me sort of eviscerate a bit
of the rhetoric there above. "Primary motivation"
is a bit of a red herring in terms of phrasing. There
is absolutely no need for something to be a primary
motivation, for it to be a net plus when put into the
scales as to it's utility.

...but now to my tale:

I committed the cardinal sin of writing a little bit
about the school I was attending at the time, albeit
as staff, not as a student. And in my defence the
school was one with a special mission (The Natural
Sciences, to be clear).

One of the teachers in the school brought up the
wikipedia article and who were in its history fully
unprompted by me, while we and some other people
were at the coffee table. I sort of mentioned the last
editor she mentioned, was me.

I did not make my initial edit to the article because
I thought somebody in the school would be impressed,
but when she clearly showed she was sort of impressed
to find out the editor was me, I have to admit, I do feel
a sort of heightened responsibility for that article and
am definitely motivated to look after it.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen