Look, a Monkey!
The Times has yet another article about Wikipedia, and how you need to be careful about trusting it - it's not a bad article, although the title - "Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar" - certainly tells me something about the way the Times sees things. To wit - they have fact checkers, and those web folks don't. They bring up a good example of what can go wrong, with a guy who's name was smeared in a bio piece on the site.
However, it's not as if the Times' hands are clean of this sort of thing. Steven Hatfill comes to mind - the man who was publicly trashed as a "person of interest" in the Anthrax investigations from 2001. There were lots of breathless articles about him in the Times (and other media outlets) - and the damage done to Mr. Hatfill by the Times is far more extensive than anything Wikipedia has done.
In fact, the Times is now the subject of a suit brought by Hatfill. In the Wikipedia case, whoever put the bogus information on the page is unknown - but that's not true of the thing with the NYT. So before they get all high and mighty about the unreliability of Wikipedia, I have a simple question for them: why does Kristof still have a job after he went on a mission to destroy Hatfill's reputation?
Comments
self correcting
[ Troy Brumley] December 4, 2005 10:43:58.088
Comment by Troy Brumley
I think they also miss the point that the web is self correcting. There are plenty of fact checkers out here, and if something is wrong, we'll take note of it. Wikipedia has a value neutral approach to avoid slant, and seems reliable. I don't expect perfection from them or anyone, unless they claim to be better than others.
Wikipedia and other websites are easier to correct than print media.
title correction
[rPm] December 4, 2005 17:49:05.565
clarification: the title of the NY Times article is actually Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar, not Snared in the Web of Wikipedia. from my perspective, your omission of the last four words skews the meaning of the title, making it seem as if the Times is proclaiming Wikipedia to be a wicked Web one gets snared in. the actual title clearly implicates some authors of Wikipedia as those who weave webs of lies, not the platform/site itself.
snagged by over-zeolous skimming again
[ James Robertson] December 4, 2005 19:05:17.538
Comment by James Robertson
Looks like I skimmed too fast over the title. I've made the correction in the post.
Sue the FBI too?
[Peter] December 5, 2005 8:26:42.964
I strongly recommend reading Amerithrax. It covers a lot of the story of the anthrax letters that most people missed, or didn't know about. I don't know about you, but I think it highly suspicious to put on a resume that you were the chief biologist of a terrorist organization in a country that had a major anthrax outbreak (major being about 10x what the entire world would see in a single year). The FBI learned very quickly that the material, methods and targets chosen were that of a domestic, right wing, terrorist, and not that of any foreigner. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0425191907/