I had the priviledge of meeting the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, last week, at the inaugural gathering of the Open Rights Group. Wikipedia is a fantastic online encyclopedia, which, given the fact that anyone can alter an entry, is mostly remarkably reliable. Occasionally things go wrong, however, as this story in the New York Times illustrates. A Mr. Seigenthaler was shocked to find an entry on himself in Wikipedia, suggesting he might have been involved in serious crimes. The entry has since been corrected but the poster has not been identified. Mr. Seigenthaler has decided not to pursue the issue, though it would be possible for him to get a court order to ask the poster's ISP to identify the culprit and then pursue a defamation case. Sensibly he forgoes the opportunity to invest large sums in lawyers and the associated stresses of lawsuits, though he says he's learned a clear lesson:
"We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research, but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects."
The article also describes Jimmy Wales reaction
"Mr. Wales said in an interview that he was troubled by the Seigenthaler episode, and noted that Wikipedia was essentially in the same boat. "We have constant problems where we have people who are trying to repeatedly abuse our sites," he said.
Still, he said, he was trying to make Wikipedia less vulnerable to tampering. He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems.
In addition, he said, Wikipedia may start blocking unregistered users from creating new pages, though they would still be able to edit them.
The real problem, he said, was the volume of new material coming in; it is so overwhelming that screeners cannot keep up with it."
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