Wikipedia used for libel.

[askolnick]

All the Unconfirmed Rumors Fit to Print

Books? They have this tendancy to be horibily outdated. I ran across one a few days ago that seemed to think that no one had made a Biaxial nematic liquid crystal. I mean come on they were reported in 2004.]

We already have resources for the latest unverified claims. They're called newspapers, magazines, and Broadcasts and Internet media. Encyclopedias are supposed to be reference works that provide people with trustworthy, verified information. Now some people are stretching that word to mean a democratic medium where people can duke it out in real time with no requirements for fact checking.

Unless Wikipedia's policies change for the better, I think it should be required to call itself "margerine," not "butter."

Recent medical research has revealed that the transfatty acids of many margerines may make them a higher -- not lower -- athereosclerosis risk than butter. I think there's a lesson to be learned there.

 

[askolnick]

'Intemperate' policy

That's why Skepticwiki does not emulate the "neutral point of view" as if by combining, neutralizing and homogenizing truth and falsehood, the resultant article is an encyclopedic reference.

Or, in other words, by requiring people to read Wiki entries with their head in the hot oven and their feet in the freezer, they should be quite comfortable.

You know, a wise person said, "everybody's entitled to their own opinons, but they're not entitled to their own facts."

 

[Darat]

That battle isn't over yet. It isa worth reading the article's talk page to put things context.

So how is someone meant to know when the "battle is over" and the article is OK?

 

[EagleEye]

Sigh.

This is why I sternly lecture my supervisees not to use the Wikipedia for reference work, but to get off their butts and look in a book. Yes, yes, I know it's heresy to actually USE A BOOK once in a while, but we don't know what kind of fact checking goes on in a lot of these sites. I'll take the World Book over the Wikipedia any day.

I use wikipedia for research all the time. I find it serves as a great launching point. While the pages contained on it may not be accurate, it's a good place to start research that leads you to actual verifiable evidence in many matters. The very fact that it's community-edited also helps to ensure a "just the facts" kind of presentation without much bias.

I think this entire story proves one thing, aside from the fact that the Wikipedia experiment is not successful. And that is that John Siegenthaler is a gentleman.

Neither has been proven. Wikipedia's success and how "gentlemanly" a person is, are a matter of opinion, and therefore can not be proven one way or another.

 

[Gayle]

This issue is of personal interest to me. About five years ago, a practical joker at my publishing house thought it would be funny to put my name on two famous books that were anonymously written in the 1950s. They were anonymous because they were the brutally honest accounts of a woman's descent into alcoholism and her subsequent recovery.

The practical joke attributed the books to me in a list of my own work. She put it on the publisher's website. Very funny. Unfortunately, the fans of those books were overjoyed to finally know the identity of the long myterious author.

The word quickly spread all over the internet. I suddenly was identified as a 100 year old alcoholic who was still alive and working.

The problem for me is that most people don't want to work with a hundred year old alcoholic, especially one who totally hit the skids. I wonder why?

It's now common practice to google somone's name when you begin to do business with them. The first contact is often by letter. Just last week I once again had to reassure people that I was not 100 years old and writing from a nursing home. I know people have googled my name when they ask me if I am well, if I am able to travel, do I need special accommodations. Those are the nice people. Others abruptly end communication.

I've had the embarrassment of accepting engagements only to be met by flabbergasted people who wanted to hear the inspiring personal story of a hundred year old alcoholic.

This dogs me regularly. All because some practical joker thought it would be funny to put my name on the website as being the author of material written in the 1950s by "anonymous." "Anonymous" is dead, not around to complain. She must have been a good writer -- I don't know; I've never read the books -- because her work won many awards. It's still in print. And I'm not getting the royalties. I'm just getting the fallout of that practical joke. There's no way to pull it back in after it's spread all over the internet.

Geni, as someone who has been the victim of having false information about me spread all over the web, all I can say is that I find your attitude about the inaccuracies in Wikipedia to be immature, arrogant, and despicable.

You don't seem to care that you're dealing with real people. Your behavior and attitude resemble that of a spoiled child who has not yet learned that other people have real lives and real feelings. The only thing that seems to matter to you is your absurd resistance is futile grandiosity. Your comments here have done more to harm Wikipedia's credibility than the original practical joker's act.

Unfortunately, it is not just you. Your attitude seems to be shared by others at Wikipedia. You're bulletproof. You can do anything without fear of legal consequences. You can ruin anyone's reputation. And you don't care. You're enjoying the power.

I personally will make a point of never clicking on a Wikipedia link again. It's also important that teachers make it clear that Wikipedia articles are not good resources for school work. There is too much chance of error and arrogance.

Wikipedia has serious problems of credibility which have been made worse by the childish posturing of the people associated with Wikipedia. We do not have to accept you, regardless of what you think or say.

I'm putting you on ignore, Geni. The only thing I am interested in hearing from you is an apology for your arrogance. I doubt it will come. Wikipedia is, for me, a lost cause. If things continue as they are now, it will end up like WordStar ... a victim of its own grandiosity.

Gayle

 

[shecky]

Why stop at Wikipedia? Sue the internet.

 

[luchog]

Geni, as someone who has been the victim of having false information about me spread all over the web, all I can say is that I find your attitude about the inaccuracies in Wikipedia to be immature, arrogant, and despicable.

You don't seem to care that you're dealing with real people. Your behavior and attitude resemble that of a spoiled child who has not yet learned that other people have real lives and real feelings. The only thing that seems to matter to you is your absurd resistance is futile grandiosity. Your comments here have done more to harm Wikipedia's credibility than the original practical joker's act.

I think you're being a bit harsh. Arrogant perhaps, but other than that, his attitude is really just the typical dotcom-era techno-utopian "true believer". They become obsessed with this wonderful new technology that they believe will "change the world", while downplaying or ignoring the inherent flaws and limitations. Anyone who attempts to point out said flaws or limitations simply "lacks vision" to understand the "true potential" of the project.

In Wikipedia's case, the major flaws are lack of scholastic rigor and sufficient screening/peer review, lack of stability, and an editorial policy firmly grounded in two fallacies, "middle ground" and "ad populum".

Unless, as others have pointed out, they make a number of fundamental changes to their model, they'll end up another Segway -- a fancy toy that completely fails to be the world-changing force its promoters claim.

 

[Diamond]

The battle is temporarily over on that article in Wikipedia because the article has been locked.

Note to Claus: I said that I would not allow any woo-woo to trash the article on Skepticwiki. I didn't say I would block people from questioning the facts of the article. So the answer to your riposte is no, it does not destroy the idea of a Wiki.

It does bring back the question of whether facts can be believed on Wikipedia. I don't think they can, unless you know they're correct from other sources, in which case what is Wikipedia for?

I had another random walk through Wikipedia today, and you know what? Even some of the longest and most detailed articles made specific claims that could not be checked because there were no references.

I'm willing to bet that there are lots of articles in Wikipedia that refer to famous people who never existed, historical events that never happened, places in the world that don't exist, definitions for words that have been made up, devices that were never invented, artistic works that were never created and so on. All with references to books and literature that don't exist, and to webpages that never were.

The possibilities for someone to fabricate all of the above on Wikipedia are immense. Sure, you can watch for vandalism. Maybe you can correct gross mistakes but what about encyclopedic fraud? How do you find out the ingenius hoaxers? They managed it with newspapers and books, but wikipedia is copied, quoted and scraped far and wide - what do you think are the chances?

Has anyone considered this?

I'll make my prediction: the next scandal of Wikipedia will be the discovery of an article containing a plausible story of something that never happened but which people will believe and quote, until someone actually does the background checking. The fake article will actually provoke a real conflagration which will continue even after the hoax has been revealed.

Do you think "Kaz deMille Jacobsen" is unique?

 

[Mojo]

I think you're being a bit harsh. Arrogant perhaps, but other than that, his attitude is really just the typical dotcom-era techno-utopian "true believer". They become obsessed with this wonderful new technology that they believe will "change the world", while downplaying or ignoring the inherent flaws and limitations. Anyone who attempts to point out said flaws or limitations simply "lacks vision" to understand the "true potential" of the project.

In Wikipedia's case, the major flaws are lack of scholastic rigor and sufficient screening/peer review, lack of stability, and an editorial policy firmly grounded in two fallacies, "middle ground" and "ad populum".

And these, of course, are not flaws of the technology itself, but of how the technology is being used.

 

[Hawk one]

Why stop at Wikipedia? Sue the internet.

A slightly different variant of this argument:

"X wrote a book about me in which he told lies about me."

"So why don't you sue the paper manufacturers."

 

[kk2796]

Here's a wikifix for you

Geni,

Let's say Alice is interested in pudding. Why not add a feature so that Alice can put "pudding" on her watchlist, but once "pudding" is on her watchlist, when Alice views the history of "pudding", next to each version of "pudding" is a radio button (allowing single-selection) for Alice to optionally select her preferred version. Think of her selection as a "living vote" for that version.

Now, introduce a notion of "Watchers' Preferred Version" (WPV). At the top of each wiki article, simply have a link to the WPV of that article (the version which the most current watchers of the article prefer). Likewise, at the top of the WPV version, have a link back to the most recent version.

Anyway, let's see this in practice.

Since "pudding" is on her watchlist, Alice will get notifications of changes to "pudding", and can quickly change her preferred version to any edit she likes. As Alice loses interest in "pudding", she'll come to dislike the "pudding" change notifications distracting her from watching "pumpkin". When Alice drops "pudding" from her watchlist, her "preferred pudding version" vote disappears.

Additionally, Alice's "pudding" vote should be dropped if her account is inactive for > 3(?) days (after which, she can simply log back in and re-cast her vote) - these deters vandals from starting many accounts to watch the same article, and protects articles from stagnant users who haven't been checking the more recent versions.

To see how effective this is, consider Vince the Vandal. Vince sees the "pudding" article as a place to talk trash against public icon Bill Cosby. Vince's vendetta has caused him to watch "pudding" closely, and tirelessly change the first line to "Bill Cosby is an idiot" whenever possible. Alice and company would normally have to preserve the integrity of "pudding" by keeping up with Vince... which is problematic because Alice (along with other pudding watchers) doesn't care about pudding nearly as much as Vince cares about thrashing "Bill Cosby".

But with a WPV system in place, Alice can leave her vote at a good version, and either ignore Vince's changes, or revert them completely at her liesure... knowing that Vince won't fool anyone in the meantime. Yet when Bob comes along, and bypasses Vince's version to add a good edit, Alice can change her vote to Bob's version - even if Vince gets there in the meantime to post another Bill Cosby insult.

And hey: NO NEED FOR CLIQUISH MODERATORS TO INTERVENE.

One way to put a little more sugar coating on this is: give registered users an option of "Always view WPV first" vs. "Always view most recent first". And even... consider making the WPV version the default version that *anonyomous users* see first (okay - that may be a bit over the top).

Unless I'm missing something, everything about this idea should be self-correcting and scalable, such that for all wiki articles, the WPV will almost universally point to the highest quality version of an article as of 12 - 48 hours ago, and all vandalism/libel problems will fade away as distant memories.

Oh - and put this in effect for 6 months, then freeze and print out the WPV version of the top 5000 articles (by gross WPV vote count), and you have Wikipedia 1.0.

 

[Floyt]

(Thanks for the heads-up on exploding whales, btw. Carry on )

 

[Euromutt]

Why should they have to?

As geni says, nobody has to, but it might be prudent to do so if you're concerned about the factual accuracy of any given work. Works of scientific literature contain source notes, specifically so that if the author makes a claim which seems dubious, the source of that claim can be traced.

Regarding the comparison of accuracy rates in that Nature article, I have to say that Wikipedia doesn't come off so badly when you take into account that a copy of the Britannica on DVD-ROM costs US$50--while a multi-volume hardcopy volume costs a staggering US$1100--and still contains mistakes. In terms of value for money, I'd say Wikipedia comes out ahead.

I've heard a number of people comment that they use Wikipedia as a starting point for research, basically to give them an idea where to look. In my experience, this holds true to the same extent for regular encyclopedias, which rarely go into a subject in much depth (at least, not the subjects I've had to write papers on), and, as noted, are not free from error themselves. The fact of the matter is that if you're doing serious research, any encyclopedia is going to fall short of your requirements. I think a lot of critics on this thread, and parallel threads, are holding Wikipedia to a higher standard (albeit inadvertently) than to which they are holding the Britannica or Encarta.

This just off the top of my head, and I don't know whether it's feasible, but one improvement to Wikipedia might be if would-be contributors were required to identify themselves (and furnish proof of their identities), at least to the stewards. That way, if a situation like the one which sparked this thread arose in future, the libellous entry could be traced back to its originator, who could then be held accountable. I'm inclined to think that if you want to slep your work where lots of people are going to look at it, you should have the guts to put your name to it, at least indirectly.

And like some others on this thread, I'm not wild about the NPOV doctrine. I understand why it exists, but it is at times adhered to in overly rigid fashion.

 

[askolnick]

Silly questions breed silly answers

A slightly different variant of this argument:

"X wrote a book about me in which he told lies about me."

"So why don't you sue the paper manufacturers."

Because the ink manufacturers would be jealous?

What a silly argument.

You can only successfully sue those you can prove responsible for a tort.

If a person or business has no control over the cause of injury, you have no legitimate claim over them.

In Wikipedia's case, it does have control -- especially when libel is brought to their attention and the editors and administrators do nothing, as is happening right now. For more than a week I've been asking the Wiki community to halt someone from repeatedly libeling me. He continues to do so with no interference from editors, moderators, or administrators.

 

[askolnick]

Hear no libel, see no libel, speak no libel

Many members of the Wiki community shun the "L-word," cautioning others not to speak it. Well, I'm increasingly fed up with their incredible arrogance and refusal to take responsibility for the harm being done when they do nothing to stop a person from repeatedly pubishing libel on Wikipedia. I'm raising the volume of my complaints there. Here's one of my recent posts to the discussion page, where some prefer to use euphemisms for that awful "L-word."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Natasha_Demkina#Letter

-Andrew

*DocJohnny, you are wrong to state that libel applies only if a plaintiff can prove detrimental effect. That's not true. According to libel laws in most if not all U.S. states, certain kinds of false speech is defamatory per se -- which means no harm has to be proven for a plaintiff to win a libel or slander suit. Examples of such defamations are false charges of adultery or false attacks on a woman's chasity, false charges of drunkeness or other drug addiction, false charges of having a venereal disease, false charges of having mental illness, false allegations of criminal conduct, and many other kinds of damaging false allegations. A well-known case was Carol Burnett's successful multi-million-dollar libel suit against the National Enquirer. Ms. Burnett only had to prove that the newspaper had falsely printed a story that she had been behaving drunk at a restaurant, and (because she was a public figure) that it acted with a reckless disregard for the truth. Defamation laws have long recognized that certain labels are indisputably harmful to a person and a victim of such false labeling need not demonstrate any actual injury to bring a successful defamation suit. (Of course, by demonstrating actual injuries, the court is likely to grant a larger award to the plaintiff.

An example of such actionable conduct has been going on right in this thread. Although I've put the defamer and the Wiki community on notice, his libelous speech continues to be posted. I believe Wiki's refusal to do anything to stop the ongoing publication of defamations, despite being asked repeatedly to stop it, constitutes reckless disregard for the truth. And yet again this morning, the person, Julio Siqueira, falsely stated here that I am under psychiatric care. As stated above, falsely accusing someone of mental illness is defamation per se and requires no evidence of injury to collect damages from the offender or defenders in court. Siqueira has long made it public that he is seeking to discredit me ("piss on that moron Skolnick" was one way he put it). I also brought this fact to the attention of the Wiki community. Yet it continues to allow Siqueira to use Wikipedia in his campaign of defamation. Something is seriously wrong here and it clearly cannot continue. [[User:Askolnick|Askolnick]] 00:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

 

[askolnick]

Here No Libel, See No Libel, Speak No Libel II

To illustrate my point about how many Wikis are finding words like "libel," "slander," and "defamation" politically incorrect, here's a posting along with my reply at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Natasha_Demkina&diff=31561026&oldid=31549526

The first comment is by my defamer, Julio Siqueria. The second is from Bill C, who is the first Wiki member to even request the removal of one defamatory rant, even though I've been asking for over a week that they put a stop to this. The first comment refers to Wiki editor Keith Tyler, who Siqueria here and elsewhere praises the editor for helping to expose my lies.


Keith, you are doing an excellent work. Skolnick simply offends anyone he gets in touch with if they do not follow the rules dictated by our Little KingSkolnick. He had a big fight with the other researchers at the test (Hyman and Wiseman). His stand is so arrogant and disgusting that the Discovery Channel ended up not interviewing him for the documentary (remember that he was the main designer of the test...). They interviewed the two other researchers involved (again, Hyman and Wiseman), and a lot. But Skolnick is not interviewed not even once! (Joe Nickell was only a helper with them, of little importance). If he just would stop quitting his psychiatrist sessions, this would not be hopeless. But the way it is, we are all at a loss while he is around. Best Regards, [[User:Julio Siqueira|Julio Siqueira]] 11:21, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

This last comment, and in particular its penultimate sentence, has just come to my attention. It has '''absolutely''' no place on Wikipedia and should be removed as an extreme example of personal attack. --[[User:BillC|BillC]] 01:08, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Bill, while you're at it, please ask them to remove the same libelous comment Siqueira made three days ago, along with the rest of the defamation he's been allowed to post here -- without any Wiki editor, moderator, or administrator telling him to stop. And please, stop using weasel words like "extreme example of personal attack." Wikis are so terrified of that "L-word"! But calling libel "extreme example of personal attack" will not protect the Wikipedia community from being held responsible for allowing the publication of defamation. Falsely stating that someone is under psychiatric care is libel. Period. Look it up in a reliable encyclopedia.

And thank you for being one of the only Wikis to recognize that such libelous attacks don't belong here. [[User:Askolnick|Askolnick]] 02:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

 

[Freakshow]

Regarding the comparison of accuracy rates in that Nature article, I have to say that Wikipedia doesn't come off so badly when you take into account that a copy of the Britannica on DVD-ROM costs US$50--while a multi-volume hardcopy volume costs a staggering US$1100--and still contains mistakes. In terms of value for money, I'd say Wikipedia comes out ahead.

The Nature article only looked at scientific articles. I'm not surprised that they are doing well in the area of science, as it reflects the backgrounds of the people that are really interested in Wikipedia. I've found a lot of computer articles that are rather good. That doesn't surprise me at all.

And it is a fallacy to say "still contains mistakes". Nothing is perfect. What matters is the error rate.

I'm not holding Wikipedia to a higher standard than Encarta or Britanica. I am using the same standard, and noting that of the 3, Wikipedia is the only one that allows anyone to edit it and have the changes take effect immediately, before they are reviewed by someone who can both properly research the subject matter being discussed and scrub the article for spelling and grammar errors.

 

[CFLarsen]

Note to Claus: I said that I would not allow any woo-woo to trash the article on Skepticwiki. I didn't say I would block people from questioning the facts of the article. So the answer to your riposte is no, it does not destroy the idea of a Wiki.

It does bring back the question of whether facts can be believed on Wikipedia. I don't think they can, unless you know they're correct from other sources, in which case what is Wikipedia for?

I quite agree on the latter. But then, SkepticWiki isn't really a Wiki, since the idea of a Wiki is (from Wikipedia):

free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Source

Don't be afraid to edit articles—anyone can edit, and we encourage you to be bold (but please don't vandalize)!
Source

Now, there's always a fine line between vandalizing and editing, but am I to understand that you will not allow anyone (whether they are woo or not is irrelevant) to edit the article, if they think they have better information? The article itself cannot be edited, but people can write comments and ask questions all they like?

That's not a Wiki, that's a blog.

I had another random walk through Wikipedia today, and you know what? Even some of the longest and most detailed articles made specific claims that could not be checked because there were no references.

References could actually be what would "save" a Wiki. How about this: Claims without references should automatically be removed, regardless of what POV they present.

I'll make my prediction: the next scandal of Wikipedia will be the discovery of an article containing a plausible story of something that never happened but which people will believe and quote, until someone actually does the background checking. The fake article will actually provoke a real conflagration which will continue even after the hoax has been revealed.

Do you think "Kaz deMille Jacobsen" is unique?

Nope, and I think you have a great point here.

 

[Schneibster]

I guess really what bothers me most is to hear someone talking about libel in a thread about Wikipedia, who is in charge of the effort to make a SkepticWiki, who makes statements that professional scientists are engaged in seeking "...to hide their data and methodology from the normal processes of replication and skeptical review which happens everywhere else in science..."

Now, as anyone who has done any serious research into this matter is well aware, the articles on the subject in question date back well over fifteen years, and are published in peer-reviewed journals. So not only are we discussing libel against the scientists involved, we are also discussing it against the staffs of these journals, which must also have been biased or incompetent if they have not detected the falsification of data or methodology.

When this individual was asked to provide evidence to support this claim, there was no answer.

To me, this is libel of exactly the kind that is being complained of in Wikipedia, which has been posted by the very person complaining of it, who is in a position of responsibility for creating a resource that appears to me to be in grave danger of being compromised on at least one issue as a result of this individual's bias. Furthermore, there can be no avoiding the fact that this individual also made it plain that not merely Wikipedia, but fora like this one, were included as risks for this type of behavior: "As far as I am aware, the legal responsibility for the accuracy of information in any medium remains with the author and the publisher, not the object" (emphasis mine). To top it all off, the resource this individual is in charge of can be seen as in competition with Wikipedia; I'm sure I don't need to point out the implications of that with regard to the statements made in the linked and other posts on this thread.

I see all sorts of really thorny problems with this, and although I will not reveal the contents of a private communication, I will reveal that I have approached this individual privately before deciding to take this action in the matter. I have waited several days after the termination of this communication to let any rancour on my part cool, and I still find myself sincerely concerned at this turn of events. I do not feel comfortable remaining silent, as was my first impulse.

I have chosen to make this post in the offending thread; it might more appropriately go in a thread on site administration, but the SkepticWiki has been separated from this forum, so I can't see what the administrators here might do about it. If this is inappropriate, I'd appreciate an indication as to what thread IS appropriate.

Make of this what you will.

 

[Hawk one]

Because the ink manufacturers would be jealous?

What a silly argument.[snip]

I agree to the fullest that it is a silly argument, whether it's in the original form I quoted it from, or my variant.. I'm not sure from your post if you realised I was being sarcastic or not (my reading comprehension is a bit slow in the morning), but just in case: I was. Just like paper manufacturers have no control over the content in books, so does the internet as a whole have no control over the content in Wikipedia.


By the way, askol, I think you will like this: On today's Penny Arcade, Tycho discusses Wikipedia. Here's a couple of paragraphs:

Reponses to criticism of Wikipedia go something like this: the first is usually a paean to that pure democracy which is the project's noble fundament. If I don't like it, why don't I go edit it myself? To which I reply: because I don't have time to babysit the Internet. Hardly anyone does. If they do, it isn't exactly a compliment.

Any persistent idiot can obliterate your contributions. The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don't know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it. In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.

Emphasis mine, by the way.

Yep, seems Tycho's got it about right. Read the entire post for a few other points.