[Air-l] Wikipedia and defamation: Man Apologizes After Fake Wikipedia Post

[Frank Thomas]

It seems that you can not reconstitute the history of the fake bio on 
Wikipedia.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051212/ap_on_hi_te/wikipedia_fake_bio
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/media/11web.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1134405394-NM/a5tN4H6z2XPJs+0lJ1g

Cheers
F. Thomas

Ken Friedman wrote:

>Friends,
>
>Barry puts his finger on the issue that bothers me here. I agree with most
>of the posts on scholarly and theoretical issues, and certainly the posts
>on pedagogical issues.
>
>My strong stand on this case is simple. There seems to be no good way
>to correct seriously damaging information in a swift, rapid manner.
>
>My goal is to see some clear action taken that will enable this kind of
>information to be caught and corrected without the kind of lengthy
>process Seigenthaler's correction took, and I want to see it done in a
>way that allows for rapid flow-through correction to the sites and
>services that use Wikipedia.
>
>In that sense, you can consider this a kind of stubborn "sit-in" or a
>non-violent "fast."
>
>As to the rest of it, I agree, and I spend a great deal of time on many of
>these issues -- at least to the degree possible in courses that sometimes
>seem to have more required content than the semester allows while
>students are also overloaded with cases and projects in other courses
>that militate against the reflective, critical thinking many of us encourage.
>
>Yours,
>
>Ken
>
>
>--
>
>Barry Wellman wrote:
>
>the current AOIR debate about Wikipedia highlights another problem.
>It is quite easy to make legally defamatory statements on Wikipedia.
>
>Normally, the remedy is a law suit for civil damages.
>
>But if the author is anonymous, whom does one sue?
>
>And yes, I know that defamation law suits are expensive and hard to do.
>But at least the legal remedy is there in principle -- when the author is
>known. But the Wikipedia approach is like someone flooding the mail with
>anonymous defamatory photocopies.
>
>--
>  
>


-- 
..........................................
Dr. Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France



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