[Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : DNA : Mumbai blasts: Ajmal Kasab's birthday confusion

[Anirudh Bhati]

*“We have started using oral citations for non-controversial content. A
tayyam dance form has been documented using such citations of proponents,”
says Cherian, who is also at the forefront of creating Wikipedia content in
Indian languages.
*

We have already started using oral citations?

anirudh


On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 9:38 AM, CherianTinu Abraham
<tinucherian at gmail.com>wrote:

> *DNA : Mumbai blasts: Ajmal Kasab's birthday confusion*
>
> http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_mumbai-blasts-ajmal-kasab-s-birthday-confusion_1568800
>
>
> *As Mumbai reeled under shock, despair and anger over being attacked again
> on July 13, a message started clogging the jammed telephone networks and set
> the internet on fire. Though other information — another blast in Navi
> Mumbai, suspicious bag found in Santa Cruz — was also flying thick and fast,
> this one had the potential to spill mass anger onto the streets.
>
> The blasts were apparently a ‘birthday gift’ for convicted 26/11 terrorist
> Ajmal Kasab, it said, and no less than Wikipedia said so.
>
> The user-generated online encyclopaedia insists on verifibility, says Tinu
> Cherian, a Bangalore-based Wikipedia administrator: “It is all about
> verifiability, not necessarily of the truth, but whether readers and editors
> can check that the material has been published by a reliable source, and not
> whether they think it is true.” the resource has become a definitive go-to
> for unbiased information.
>
> But on that fateful Wednesday, verifiability itself was the problem. Three
> sources — Indian Express (2009), IBNLive (2009) and Hindustan Times (2010)
> had mentioned Kasab’s date of birth (DoB) as September 13, 1987, while two —
> The Times of India (February 2011), The Hindu (2008) said it was on July 13
> that year.
>
> The entry on Kasab was created on November 29, 2008, three days after the
> attacks, and since December that year, his DoB has been mentioned as July
> 13.
>
> No wonder then that when a Chennai-based user changed it to September 22 at
> 8.18pm (the last blast occurred at 7.05pm), there was consternation among
> Wikipedians, and minutes later, an ‘edit war’ as the community calls such
> rapid changes, had begun. Unable to verify the date, an administrator locked
> the page.
>
> Wikipedians say such problems are not uncommon, two recent cases being the
> rumour that freedom fighter Bhagat Singh was born on Valentine’s Day
> (February 14), and premature reports that West Bengal chief minister had
> died. Though there is no laid-down code, and no one in particular monitors
> changes to the database, the loosely organised community says it
> self-regulates and decisions are arrived at on case-to-case basis and
> actions depend on creating consensus.
>
> Soon after the edit war, a group of Wikipedians went into a huddle on the
> ‘Talk’ page of the website. Among them was Utkarsh Raj Atmaram, a
> 27-year-old Wikipedia administrator from Hyderabad.
>
> Though he too had learnt about the controversy on Twitter, he was initially
> circumspect about the real date being July 13. However, when he checked the
> revision history of the article, he realised the truth was at best a shade
> of grey.
>
> “Though the DoB had always been July 13, somewhere down the line the
> reference was deleted. This fuelled the confusion further,” Atmaram says.
>
> A Washington Post blog later attributed a part of this confusion to: “Those
> who are making the Wikipedia entry changes [to September 13] are trying to
> delegitimise the terrorists behind the attack.”
>
> It was finally decided at 11.26pm that both the dates should be reflected
> after one contributor, ‘kangzan’,pointed out: “Right now Kasab’s birthday
> is both in September and in July at the same time, exactly like
> Schrodinger’s hypothetical cat is both dead and alive at the same time — a
> thought experiment used to illustrate physics’ aptly named uncertainty
> principle”. Later, when Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad chief Rakesh Maria
> confirmed the date to be September 13, the issue was laid to rest.
>
> The incident highlights the fragile nature of ‘truth’ on the internet —
> Wikipedia doesn’t know something happened until a credible source doesn’t
> ratify it. “That is why, even though Twitter can be ahead of us in breaking
> news, we do not create articles based on what is said there,” Atmaram says.
> Perhaps that is why Kasab’s birth date being mentioned as July 13 on
> Wikipedia created such a furoreas people trust its content more than even
> conventional sources of information.
>
> The flip side, however, especially in countries like India where only a
> fraction of government records are online, is a lot of information does not
> meet the encyclopaedia’s ‘notability factor’, which determines whether
> particular information can be added to the database. To circumvent the
> problem, Wikipedians in India are experimenting with a novel idea.
>
> “We have started using oral citations for non-controversial content. A
> tayyam dance form has been documented using such citations of proponents,”
> says Cherian, who is also at the forefront of creating Wikipedia content in
> Indian languages.
>
> As the dust settles on the debate, one thing is clear: Information wars of
> the future will be fought online, and in crises, what transpires between
> netizens will shape reality on the ground.*
>
> Regards
> Tinu Cherian
> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#July_2011
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>
>
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