Wikipedia Condemned By World News Media

Wikipedia has been dismissed by both professional journalists and
the academic community as a site which censors facts and serves as a gossip and rumor mill.

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem ----July 6......From Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, PC Magazine, and CNN to The Washington Post, Sydney Morning Herald, USA Today and ZDNet, the world's global news media is today clearly questioning the credibility of Wikipedia.

Even as Reuters reported that the death of former Enron Corp. chief Ken Lay at the age of 64 caused "rampant confusion on Wikipedia", Wikipedia executives again broke their own rules and policies as it deleted several articles on the Wikipedia site relating to news organizations which were critical of the Wikipedia site. Danny Wool, Wikipedia's number two executive provided a personal excuse for the unilateral censorship that it was "tiresome" for him to continue censoring news media which had articles on the Wikipedia site.

The Israel Government Press Office accredited Israel News Agency, which had been deleted from Wikipedia in the past by Danny Wool without having taken a Wikipedia procedural community vote to delete, was also deleted in the past 24 hours.

Reuters in New York ran with a global headline: "Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia."
This wire service story is still finding its way to thousands of print and broadcast news media around the globe. A story which could actually serve as the deathblow for Wikipedia.

Reuters stated that this latest case of misinformation by Wikipedia "underscored the challenges facing the online encyclopedia."

As the news was breaking, the site's entry regarding Lay apparently offered a variety of causes for his passing, which turned out to be coronary artery disease, according to Mesa County (Colo.) Coroner Robert Kutzman.

Kutzman said that the death of Lay, who six weeks ago was found guilty of fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history and was facing a long prison sentence, showed "no evidence of foul play." However, if you were reading Wikipedia on Wednesday morning, you wouldn't have known that.

According to Reuters, shortly after news outlets began reporting Lay's death around 9 a.m. CDT, the "facts" were added to his online biography. It turned out, though, that they could more accurately have been described as rumors.

At 9:06 a.m., Wikipedia's entry for Lay said he died "of an apparent suicide." At 9:08 a.m., it said he died at his Aspen, Colo. home "of an apparent [[heart attack] or suicide.]." Within the same minute, it said the cause of death was "yet to be determined." At 9:09 a.m., it said "no further details have been officially released" about the death. Two minutes later, it said, "The guilt of ruining so many lives finally [sic] led him to his suicide." At 9:12 a.m., that was replaced by, "According to Lay's pastor the cause was a 'massive coronary' heart attack." By 9:39 a.m., Lay's entry said, "Speculation as to the cause of the heart attack lead many people to believe it was due to the amount of stress put on him by the Enron trial." That statement was later dropped.

By early Wednesday afternoon, the entry said Lay was pronounced dead at Aspen Valley Hospital, citing the Pitkin, Colo. sheriff's department. It said he apparently died of a massive heart attack, citing KHOU-TV in Houston. And as of Thursday morning, the - apparently - final entry said, "While vacationing in Colorado on July 5, 2006, Kenneth Lay died from coronary artery disease. The Pitkin Sheriff’s Department confirmed that officers were called to Lay’s house in Old Snowmass, Colorado, near Aspen at 1:41 AM MDT (3:41 AM EDT). He was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:11 AM MDT."

Reuters reported that officials at Wikipedia, which claims to have 13,000 active writers and editors, did not return phone and e-mail requests for comment.

The Washington Post article: Death by Wikipedia: The Kenneth Lay Chronicles written by Frank Ahrens on July 9, stated: "The death of Kenneth L. Lay ... further exposed the critical weakness of Wikipedia that prevents it from becoming the go-to source for Internet knowledge that it ought to be. This article unlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia has no formal peer review for its articles. They may be written by experts or insane crazy people. Or worse, insane crazy people with an agenda. And Internet access."

One can only imagine the suffering and anguish that Wikipedia has caused to Ken Lay's family and friends.

In censoring the Israel News Agency, Israel's first government accredited on-line news service established back in 1995, Wikipedia joins the ranks of such notable censoring countries and organizations as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, China, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, the PFLP, Hizbullah and the Palestinian Authority.

The move to censor the INA, which has a reach of over 60 million readers (Alexa.com) was made unilaterally by Danny Wool, the number two executive at Wikipedia. The Israel News Agency, a non-profit organization, directly communicates advisories from the Israel Government Press Office, the Israel Foreign Ministry, the Israel Ministry of Defense and the Israel Defense Forces.

The INA has been credited with many exclusives including Al-Qaeda : The 39 Principles of Holy War, reports directly from the scenes of the Passover Massacre in Netanya, Israel, the Tel Aviv terror attack on the Dolphanarium, the 9/11 terror attack in New York and the recently sponsored Israel SEO contest to address the Holocaust cartoon contest which was coordinated by the Iran government. The INA has served as a news source to Google News since 2002.

Censoring is not something new at Wikipedia.

According to Wikitruth, Alan Dershowitz was censored by Wikipedia Jimbo Wales on December 8, 2005. "In true Wikipedia style, this article was reduced down to a single sentence reading "Alan Morton Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938) is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School." on the early morning of December 8, 2005. His rational for doing so was: "I have received a very strong complaint about this article, and so I have protected this very short version for tonight.

Unlike the normal case where protected articles should not be edited, I want to try an experiment -- admins can edit this article. We need to verify very carefully, with documentable sources, every single fact in the article.--Jimbo Wales 00:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)" Wikitruth continues: "The standout effect of the censorship of Dershowitz's article is that as of March 22, 2006 it sources a dispute with Noam Chomsky in its references that has been censored from the article! The edit history prior to December 8, 2005 at 00:07 UTC has been manipulated or otherwise destroyed from the Alan Dershowitz article by Jimbo and his underlings, very possibly a GFDL violation.

Dershowitz is a highly controversial lawyer, famous for getting into scrapes with other high-profile types. That's fairly common knowledge: few of us would not have seen his face in the paper at one time or another." "But Wikipedia thinks he's just another lawyer. Dershowitz didn't like his Wikipedia article.

If you don't like what the wiki says about you, there are two roads to fixing it. First you can try editing the article. You'll generally be heavily abused by Wikithugs, who will chant weird invocations like WP:AUTO at you and expect you to understand that that means they believe they have a license to treat you like shit if you have the temerity to work on your own biography. Then, if you are a high-powered lawyer, or know one, you can try the second route. Give Jimmy a call and use the magic words. ...the magic words are "legal action". But take care. Don't mention them on the wiki, or a Wikithug will banish you for "making a legal threat". Make your legal threats to Jimbo directly."

Wikipedia CEO Jimbo Wales and his "sockpuupet" Danny Wool clearly spit in the faces of all their administrators and users as they break the rules and policies created by their own Wikipedia "peoples" community.

As the Village Voice recently commented: "Not notable? Wikipedia hosts approximately three jillion full-page articles about local high schools, complete with alma mater lyrics, and it can't make room for a critical look at its own practices? Perversely enough, though, "notability" has indeed become a byword for Wikipedia's freelance fact police, who delete at will whatever they think might worsen the site's smoldering reputation as a trivia dump."

One should note that many of the editors at Wikipedia are professional, dedicated, creative and highly talented, but they do not make up a majority. They deserve credit for their many hours and contributions, but can you imagine a car repair garage stating: "the free garage where anyone can play with your cylinders?"

Are Wikipedia's investors and venture capital sources such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Dan Gillmor, The Omidyar Network, Pierre Omidyar, Mark Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Joichi Ito, and Mitch Kapor aware of the rampant libel, slander and censorship taking place in Wikipedia's so-called "citizens media?"

To censor any free and democratic source of news is a violation of our basic rights to free speech in a free society. As Wikipedia is a leading source of information coming out of the US, censorship of non-inciteful accredited news media is a direct breach of public trust which only serves the egos and pride of Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales and his assistant Danny Wool. Censorship at Wikipedia is a highly serious and dangerous action.

Furthermore, Wikipedia, which is now being blocked for use by many universities and colleges for its lack of accountability, through its lack of accountable user and administrator posts could actually be aiding terrorists to communicate with one another on the Internet through their anonymous edits. Are we witnessing a new era of McCarthyism? Anti-semitic actions being embraced by Wikipedia with a self-hating Jew who speaks a few words of Hebrew - Danny Wool?

Is it no mistake that al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Hizbullah and the PFLP are referred to as "militant" groups rather than organizations which plan and implement terrorism?

Perhaps the worst case of Wikipedia libel, slander and censorship centered around former USA TODAY editorial page editor John Seigenthaler. Wikipedia for four months carried an article falsely linking him to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy. But as angry as Seigenthaler was, and as untrue as the article had been, it's unlikely that he has a good court case against Wikipedia, according to legal experts interviewed by CNET News.com.

Seigenthaler himself acknowledged as much in a USA Today op-ed piece. A case in which a man was falsely linked on Wikipedia to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy has led some to question the online encyclopedia's libel liability.

Bottom line: While Wikipedia is most likely safe from legal liability for libel, the issues raised by the Seigenthaler case should be carefully considered, some legal experts say. More stories on Wikipedia thanks to section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act (CDA), which became law in 1996, Wikipedia is most likely safe from legal liability for libel, regardless of how long an inaccurate article stays on the site. That's because it is a service provider as opposed to a publisher such as Salon.com or CNN.com.

In his scathing, Nov. 29 opinion column in USA Today, the 78-year-old Seigenthaler wrote that in the original Wikipedia article, "one sentence was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant." The article was written by an anonymous Wikipedia user traceable only to a BellSouth Internet account, but Seigenthaler added that the giant ISP wouldn't reveal the author's name. And despite his protestations, Seigenthaler wrote, Wikipedia's only action prior to removing the offending article on Oct. 5 was to change a misspelling on May 29, just three days after it was originally posted.

"I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable. I phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder and asked, "Do you ... have any way to know who wrote that?" "No, we don't," he said. Representatives of the other two Websites said their computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from Wikipedia, never checking whether it is false or factual. Naturally, I want to unmask my "biographer." And, I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool."

"When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people." For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia."

As stated in Wikipedia: A Nightmare Of Libel and Slander "Wikipedia defines the essence of mediocrity. For this reason it has risen to a high ranking on the Net's search engines." The mediocrity continues. And rather than citing hundreds of other incidents where Wikipedia has directly hurt both businesses and people through allowing libel, slander and censorship on it's Website, my time is much better spent making my children smile.

Related Web site: The Wikipedia Review