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Revision as of 15:39, 16 December 2005 editR. fiend (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Rollbackers24,205 edits rv. all that information is elsewhere in the article. stating it twice makes this article the sort of awfully written crap that garners so much criticism← Previous edit Latest revision as of 12:17, 19 November 2024 edit undoDaydreamer02 (talk | contribs)159 editsm Turned links into inline citations 
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{{short description|2005 editorial controversy on Misplaced Pages}}
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The '''John Seigenthaler Sr. Misplaced Pages biography controversy''' occurred in ] after an anonymous editor posted a hoax in the ] entry for ] in May. In September 2005, ], an old friend of Seigenthaler's, discovered the entry, which suggested that Seigenthaler may have had a role in the assassinations of both ] and ]. Demonstrably false statements in the article included claims that Seigenthaler lived in the ] from 1971 to 1984, and that he was the founder of a public relations firm. Seigenthaler's brother founded a PR firm which bears the family name, but John Seigenthaler has no role in it.
In May 2005, an unregistered editor created a hoax ] article about journalist ].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/technology/internet/25wikipedia.html?_r=1|title=Misplaced Pages to Limit Changes to Articles on People|work=]|date=August 24, 2009|access-date=April 7, 2012|last=Cohen|first=Noam|archive-date=November 3, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103213341/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/technology/internet/25wikipedia.html?_r=1|url-status=live}}</ref> The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of ] ] and ] ].


After the hoax was discovered and corrected later in September, Seigenthaler, a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, wrote in '']'' describing the article as an "Internet character assassination".<ref name = "Seigenthaler2005">{{cite news|title=A false Misplaced Pages 'biography'|first=John|last=Seigenthaler|author-link=John Seigenthaler|date=November 29, 2005|access-date=October 27, 2013|url=http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121128215548/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm|url-status=live|archive-date=November 28, 2012|newspaper=]}}</ref>
After Johnson alerted him to the article, Seigenthaler contacted Misplaced Pages founder ] in October 2005, and Wales took the unusual step of having the false information <!-- please see ] for an explanation of why this is an external link --> from Misplaced Pages version logs. As a result, the unredacted versions of the article can be viewed only by Misplaced Pages administrators. The false statements were added on ], ] so they had remained uncorrected for at least four months. Several "mirror" websites not controlled by Misplaced Pages continued to display the inaccurate article for several weeks following Misplaced Pages's action. It is not known how many people actually saw the libelous entry before it was corrected.


The incident raised questions about the ] and other websites with ] that lack the legal accountability of traditional newspapers and published materials.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://stateofthemedia.org/2006/overview/public-attitudes/|title=The State of the News Media 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160322173754/http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2006/overview/public-attitudes/|archive-date=March 22, 2016|work=The Project for Excellence in Journalism|date=September 14, 2009}}</ref> In a December 13, 2005, interview,<ref name="Helm">{{cite web|url=http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-12-13/wikipedia-a-work-in-progress|title=Misplaced Pages: "A Work in Progress"|last=Helm|first=Burt|date=December 13, 2005|work=BusinessWeek Online|publisher=Bloomberg Businessweek|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150411080145/http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2005-12-13/wikipedia-a-work-in-progress|archive-date=April 11, 2015|access-date=October 16, 2013}}</ref> co-founder ] expressed his support for Misplaced Pages policy allowing articles to be edited by unregistered users, but announced plans to roll back their article creation privileges as part of a vandalism-control strategy.<ref name="Helm" /> The incident ultimately led Misplaced Pages to introduce stricter referencing requirements for biographies of living persons.
On ], ], an ] article by Seigenthaler appeared in '']'', describing the particulars of the incident. It included a verbatim reposting of the falsehoods in question:


==Hoax==
<blockquote>"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to ] Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, ]. Nothing was ever proven."</blockquote>
On May 26, 2005, a biographical article about ] was created by an anonymous Misplaced Pages editor that contained, in its entirety, the following text:<ref>{{cite web|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages%3AList_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia%2FJohn_Seigenthaler_Sr.&oldid=14417929|title=First edit to Seigenthaler's biography page|publisher=Misplaced Pages|date=May 26, 2005|access-date=August 24, 2022|archive-date=October 9, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221009132953/https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages%3AList_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia%2FJohn_Seigenthaler_Sr.&oldid=14417929|url-status=live}}</ref>
<blockquote>John Seigenthaler was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the {{sic|ealry}} {{sic|1960's.}} For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy {{sic|assasinations}} of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.


John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984.
Seigenthaler detailed his own failed attempts to identify the person who posted the inaccurate biography to Misplaced Pages anonymously. He reported asking the poster's ], ], to identify its user. He criticized Misplaced Pages for offering inaccurate material to a wide audience.


He started one of the country's largest public relations {{sic|firm}} shortly thereafter.
An expanded version was published several days later in '']'' where Seigenthaler was ] in the 1970s.
</blockquote>


=== Detection and correction ===
On December 9, '''Brian Chase''', a 38 year old operations manager at Rush Delivery in ], admitted to Seigenthaler he had placed the allegations there to play a joke on a colleague. Chase then resigned from his job at Rush Delivery for his misuse of Rush equipment during the hoax.
In September, ], a friend of Seigenthaler's, discovered the article.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Carney|first1=John I.|title=Seigenthaler battles online encyclopedia|url=http://www.t-g.com/story/1139621.html|access-date=September 30, 2014|work=Shelbyville Times-Gazette|date=February 13, 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006111337/http://www.t-g.com/story/1139621.html|archive-date=October 6, 2014}}</ref> After Johnson alerted him to the article, Seigenthaler emailed his friends and colleagues about it. On September 23, 2005, colleague ] copied Seigenthaler's official biography from the ] website into Misplaced Pages. The following day, this biography was removed by a Misplaced Pages editor due to ] and was replaced with a short original biography.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220609121313/http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=John_Seigenthaler&oldid=23944523 |date=June 9, 2022 }} of the rewriting of the official biography.</ref> Newton informed Seigenthaler of his action when he ran into Seigenthaler in November in New York at the ] dinner.


In October 2005, Seigenthaler contacted the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, ], who hid affected versions of the article history from public view in the Misplaced Pages version logs, in effect removing them from all but Misplaced Pages ]' view.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211122195908/https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=Essjay&page=John+Seigenthaler+Sr. |date=November 22, 2021 }} of the article.</ref> Some ] websites not controlled by Misplaced Pages continued to display the older and inaccurate article for several weeks until the new version of the article was propagated to these other websites.<ref>{{cite book|last=Dalby|first=Andrew|title=The World and Misplaced Pages: How we are editing reality|year=2009|publisher=Siduri|location=Somerset|isbn=978-0-9562052-0-9|page=|url=https://archive.org/details/worldwikipediaho0000dalb/page/59}}</ref> In 2013, the hoax article was archived to {{self-reference link|Misplaced Pages:List of hoaxes on Misplaced Pages/John Seigenthaler Sr.|Misplaced Pages:List of hoaxes on Misplaced Pages}}.
== Reaction ==
The incident has garnered Misplaced Pages a great deal of coverage in the press, much of it unfavorable.


===Anonymous editor identified===
] announced on ]'s "Special Report" that false information linking Seigenthaler to the assassination of the 35th president had "finally been removed" from Misplaced Pages, which he characterized as "calling itself an encyclopedia", but which was "in fact an open site in which anyone can enter erroneous information and where factual errors abound".
{{Wikinews|Author of Misplaced Pages character assassination takes responsibility}}
On November 29, 2005, Seigenthaler described the incident in an ] in '']'', of which he had been the founding editorial director. In the article, he included a verbatim reposting of the false statements and called Misplaced Pages a "flawed and irresponsible research tool".<ref name="Seigenthaler2005" />


An expanded version was published several days later in '']'', a daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee, where Seigenthaler had served in various capacities from beat reporter to chairman. In the article, Seigenthaler detailed his failed attempts to identify the anonymous person who posted the inaccurate biography. He reported that he had asked the poster's ], ], to identify its user from the user's ]. BellSouth refused to identify the user without a court order, suggesting that Seigenthaler file a ] against the user, which Seigenthaler declined to do.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Terdiman|first=Daniel|title=Is Misplaced Pages safe from libel liability?|author-link=Daniel Terdiman|url=https://www.cnet.com/news/is-wikipedia-safe-from-libel-liability/|access-date=January 25, 2021|website=CNET|language=en|archive-date=January 23, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210123084303/https://www.cnet.com/news/is-wikipedia-safe-from-libel-liability/|url-status=live}}</ref>
In the ''USA Today'' article Seigenthaler makes the claim that Misplaced Pages is a "flawed and irresponsible research tool". Several other publications have commented on the incident, often ] Misplaced Pages (and the open editing model employed by the encyclopedia) as unreliable — with the Seigenthaler incident offered as proof. Partly in response to this scandal, the scientific magazine '']'' published a study in ], 2005, in which Misplaced Pages was found to be similar in credibility to the ].


Daniel Brandt, a ] activist who had started the website Misplaced Pages Watch to provide scrutiny of Misplaced Pages content in response to his objections to the article about him, looked up the IP address in Seigenthaler's article. He found that it related to Rush Delivery, a delivery service company in Nashville. He contacted Seigenthaler and the media and posted this information on his website.<ref>{{cite web|last=Terdiman|first=Daniel|author-link=Daniel Terdiman|title=In search of the Misplaced Pages prankster|publisher=]|date=December 15, 2005|url=http://news.cnet.com/In+search+of+the+Misplaced Pages+prankster/2008-1029_3-5995977.html?tag=st.num|access-date=July 3, 2014|archive-date=March 8, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230308044658/https://www.cnet.com/news/|url-status=live}}</ref>
On ], ], Seigenthaler and Wales appeared jointly on ] to discuss the matter. On ], ], the two were interviewed on ]'s '']'' radio program. There Wales described a new policy he implemented preventing unregistered users from creating new articles on the English-language Misplaced Pages, though they continued to be able to edit existing articles as before.


On December 9, Brian Chase, an operations manager of Rush Delivery, admitted that he had posted the false biography because he believed Misplaced Pages to be "some sort of joke website". After confessing, Chase was fired from Rush Delivery.<ref name="Buchanan">{{cite web|last=Buchanan|first=Brian J.|date=November 17, 2006|title=Founder shares cautionary tale of libel in cyberspace|url=http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=17798|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070212171844/http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=17798|archive-date=February 12, 2007|access-date=October 4, 2011|publisher=]}}</ref><ref name=economist>{{cite news |title=The wiki principle |date=April 22, 2006 |newspaper=] |url=https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/04/22/the-wiki-principle |url-access=subscription |access-date=November 22, 2021 |issn=0013-0613 |archive-date=November 22, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211122184535/https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/04/22/the-wiki-principle |url-status=live }}</ref> He presented a letter of apology to Seigenthaler,<ref>{{Cite web |first= |date=June 4, 2007 |title=Man who posted false Misplaced Pages bio apologizes to Seigenthaler |url=http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=16177 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070604233534/http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=16177 |archive-date=2007-06-04|access-date=July 12, 2022 |website=]}}</ref> who successfully interceded with Rush Delivery to reinstate Chase.<ref name="Buchanan" /> Seigenthaler confirmed that he would not file a lawsuit in relation to the incident. He said that he was concerned that "every biography on Misplaced Pages is going to be hit by this stuff—think what they'd do to ] and ], to mention two. My fear is that we're going to get government regulation of the Internet as a result."<ref name="Page2005">{{cite news|first=Susan|last=Page|title=Author apologizes for fake Misplaced Pages biography|date=December 11, 2005|access-date=October 27, 2013|newspaper=]|url=https://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-11-wikipedia-apology_x.htm|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111228194738/http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-11-wikipedia-apology_x.htm|archive-date=December 28, 2011}}</ref>
In the CNN interview, Seigenthaler also raised the spectre of increased government regulation of the Internet:


== Reactions ==
<blockquote>... Can I just say where I'm worried about this leading. Next year we go into an election year. Every politician is going to find himself or herself subjected to the same sort of outrageous commentary that hit me, and hits others. I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a result of that. And I, I tell you, I think if you can't fix it, both fix the history as well as the biography pages, I think it's going to be in real trouble, and we're going to have to be fighting to keep the government from regulating you.</blockquote>


=== Seigenthaler's public reaction ===
In reaction to the controversy, '']'' business editor Larry Ingrassia sent out a memo to his entire staff commenting on the reliability of Misplaced Pages and writing, "We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper."


In his November 29, 2005, ''USA Today'' editorial, Seigenthaler criticized Congress for ] of the ], which protects ISPs and web sites from being held legally responsible for content posted by their customers and users:<ref name = "Seigenthaler2005" />
Since many people read Seigenthaler's op-ed, and few people responded to the original article, some {{fact}} Misplaced Pages contributors (known as <!-- please see ] for an explanation of why this is an external link --> ) questioned his reluctance to simply correct the page.


{{blockquote| Federal law also protects online corporations&nbsp;– BellSouth, AOL, MCI, Misplaced Pages, etc.&nbsp;– from libel lawsuits. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." That legalese means that, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for defaming attacks on citizens posted by others.
Seigenthaler responded to this in an interview on ] (National Public Radio). He said that he did not want to have anything to do with Misplaced Pages because he disapproved of its basic assumptions. He also pointed out that the false information had been online for several months before he was aware of it, and that he could not edit Misplaced Pages when he did not even know of the article's existence. Editing Misplaced Pages, he suggested, would lend it his sanction or approval. He believed that editing the article was not enough and instead wanted to expose what he thought are "incurable flaws" in the Misplaced Pages process and ethos.


And so we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research&nbsp;– but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them. }}
== Chase located ==


On December 5, 2005, Seigenthaler and Wales appeared jointly on ] to discuss the matter. On December 6, 2005, the two were interviewed on ]'s '']'' radio program. Wales described a new policy that he had implemented in order to prevent unregistered users from creating new articles on the English-language Misplaced Pages, though their ability to edit existing articles was retained.
], a ] privacy activist who had started the anti-Misplaced Pages "Misplaced Pages Watch" in response to problems he had with his eponymous article, found that the IP address used to create the false biography was the host to a website at an ] belonging to a BellSouth customer, which contains the text, "Welcome to Rush Delivery". He contacted the company, the media, and Seigenthaler personally.


In the CNN interview, Seigenthaler also raised the spectre of increased government regulation of the Web:
After receiving a hand-delivered apology and speaking with Chase on the phone, Seigenthaler decided he would not file a suit and urged Rush Delivery to rehire Chase.
{{Wikinews|Author of Misplaced Pages character assassination takes responsibility}}


{{blockquote|Can I just say where I'm worried about this leading. Next year we go into an election year. Every politician is going to find himself or herself subjected to the same sort of outrageous commentary that hit me, and hits others. I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a result of that. And I tell you, I think if you can't fix it, both fix the history as well as the biography pages, I think it's going to be in real trouble, and we're going to have to be fighting to keep the government from regulating you.}}
One of Rush Delivery's clients was Seigenthaler's late brother Thomas, founder of Seigenthaler Public Relations.

In the December 6 joint ] interview, Seigenthaler said that he did not want to have anything to do with Misplaced Pages because he disapproved of its basic assumptions. In an article Seigenthaler wrote for ''USA Today'' in late 2005, he said, "I am interested in letting many people know that Misplaced Pages is a flawed and irresponsible research tool."<ref name = "Seigenthaler2005" /> He also pointed out that the false information had been online for over four months before he was aware of it, and that he had not been able to edit the article to correct it. After speaking with Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimmy Wales, Seigenthaler said: "My 'biography' was posted May 26. On May 29, one of Wales' volunteers 'edited' it only by correcting the misspelling of the word 'early.' For four months, Misplaced Pages depicted me as a suspected assassin before I erased it from the website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks."<ref name = "Seigenthaler2005" /> Editing Misplaced Pages, he suggested, would lend it his sanction or approval, and he stated his belief that editing the article was not enough and instead he wanted to expose "incurable flaws" in the Misplaced Pages process and ethos.

On December 9, Seigenthaler appeared on ]'s '']'' with ] hosting. He said he was concerned that other pranksters would try to spoof members of Congress or other powerful figures in government, which may then prompt a backlash and turn back ] rights on the Web.

In the June 2007 issue of '']'' magazine, Seigenthaler also expressed concern about the lack of transparency underlined by Wales' removal of the hoax pages from the article's history page. He also stated that many of the comments left by users in the edit summaries were things he would not want his nine-year-old grandson to see.<ref name="Mangu-Ward">{{cite journal|last=Mangu-Ward|first=Katherine|title=Misplaced Pages and Beyond: Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision|journal=Reason Magazine|pages=20–29|date=June 2007|url=http://reason.com/archives/2007/05/30/wikipedia-and-beyond/1|access-date=March 8, 2016|archive-date=July 19, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180719121610/http://reason.com/archives/2007/05/30/wikipedia-and-beyond/1|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Wikimedia Foundation reaction ===
In an interview with '']'' on December 13, 2005, Wales discussed the reasons the hoax had gone undetected, and steps being taken to address them.<ref name="Helm" /> He stated that one problem was that Misplaced Pages's use had grown faster than its self-monitoring system could comfortably handle, and that therefore new page creation would be restricted to account holders, addressing one of Seigenthaler's main criticisms.

He also gave his opinion that encyclopedias as a whole (whether print or online) were not usually appropriate for primary sources and should not be relied upon as authoritative (as some were doing), but that nonetheless Misplaced Pages was more reliable as "background reading" on subjects than most online sources. He stated that Misplaced Pages was a "work in progress".<ref name="Helm"/>

A variety of changes were also made to Misplaced Pages's software and working practices, to address some of the issues arising. A new policy, '{{self-reference link|Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons|biographies of living persons}}', was created on December 17, 2005; editorial restrictions, including reference requirements, were introduced on the creation of new Misplaced Pages articles; and new tracking categories for the biographies of living people were implemented.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-12-05/In_the_news|title=Misplaced Pages and Seigenthaler; Restricted editing|work=Misplaced Pages Signpost|date=December 5, 2005|access-date=November 23, 2021|archive-date=June 16, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220616183637/https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-12-05/In_the_news|url-status=live}}</ref>

The Foundation added a new level of "oversight" features to the ] software,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-06-05/Oversight|work=Misplaced Pages Signpost|title=New revision-hiding feature added|date=June 5, 2006|author=Ral315|access-date=February 23, 2015|archive-date=January 30, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160130174335/https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-06-05/Oversight|url-status=live}}</ref> accessible as of May 16, 2012, to around 37 experienced editors and Wikimedia staff members nominated by either Wales or the ]. This originally allowed for specific historical versions to be hidden from everyone (including Oversight editors), which then become unable to be viewed by anyone except developers via manual intervention, though the feature was later changed so that other Oversighters could view these revisions to monitor the tool's use. Currently such procedures are standardized by the 'Office actions' policy which states: "Sometimes the Wikimedia Foundation has to delete, protect or blank a page without going through the normal site/community process(es). These edits are temporary measures to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user."<ref name="wp-office-actions">{{cite web|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Office_actions|title=Office actions|work=]|publisher=]|access-date=November 23, 2021|archive-date=November 20, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211120054847/https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Office_actions|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Other reactions ===
In reaction to the controversy, '']'' business editor Larry Ingrassia sent a memo to his staff commenting on the ] and writing, "We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper."<ref>{{cite web|title=The New York Times Business editor Larry Ingrassia's memo "Wiki-whatdia?"|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060308105249/http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10748|archive-date=March 8, 2006|date=December 7, 2005|url=http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10748}}</ref> Several other publications commented on the incident, often criticizing Misplaced Pages and its open editing model as unreliable, citing the Seigenthaler incident as evidence.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/12/wikipedia_no_responsibility/| title=There's no Misplaced Pages entry for 'moral responsibility'| publisher=The Register (UK)| date=December 12, 2005| first=Andrew| last=Orlowski| access-date=August 10, 2017| archive-date=June 16, 2006| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060616122532/http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/12/wikipedia_no_responsibility/| url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | last=Terdiman | first=Daniel | title=Growing pains for Misplaced Pages | date=December 5, 2005 | publisher=CNET | url=http://news.cnet.com/Growing+pains+for+Misplaced Pages/2100-1025_3-5981119.html | access-date=July 3, 2014 | archive-date=July 14, 2014 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714115915/http://news.cnet.com/Growing+pains+for+Misplaced Pages/2100-1025_3-5981119.html | url-status=live }}</ref>{{Wikinews|Misplaced Pages and Britannica about as accurate in science entries, reports Nature}}The scientific journal '']'' conducted a study comparing the accuracy of Misplaced Pages and the '']'' in 42 ]s–related articles in December 2005. The Misplaced Pages articles studied were found to contain four serious errors and 162 factual errors, omissions or misleading statements, while the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' also contained four serious errors and 123 factual errors, omissions or misleading statements. Referring to the Seigenthaler incident and several other controversies, the authors wrote that the study "suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule."<ref name="Giles2005">{{cite journal|last=Giles|first=Jim|title=Special Report: Internet encyclopaedias go head to head|journal=Nature|volume=438|issue=7070|pages=900–901|date=December 15, 2005|doi=10.1038/438900a|pmid=16355180|bibcode=2005Natur.438..900G|doi-access=free}}</ref>

== See also ==
* {{Section link|Bertrand Meyer#Misplaced Pages hoax}} – a French academic who was falsely declared dead on the German Misplaced Pages


== References == == References ==
* ''USA Today'': , by John Seigenthaler - Nov. 29, 2005
* News.com: , by Charles Cooper - Dec. 2, 2005
* Tennessean.com: , by John Seigenthaler - Dec. 4, 2005.
* CNN.com: , Kyra Phillips interviews John Seigenthaler and Jimmy Wales - Dec. 5, 2005
* News.com: , by Daniel Terdiman - Dec. 5, 2005
* Associated Press: by Dan Goodin, AP - Dec. 5, 2005
* National Public Radio: , ''Talk of the Nation'' story summary and radio broadcast - Dec. 6, 2005
* News.com , by Daniel Terdiman - Dec. 7, 2005
* ''New York Times'': , by Katharine Q. Seelye - Dec. 11, 2005
* Tennessean.com: , by Natalia Mielczarek - Dec. 11, 2005
* BBC News: - Dec. 12, 2005
* Yahoo!: - Dec. 12, 2005


==External links== === Notes ===
{{reflist|30em}}
*, The Register (UK)

* - Legal analysis of controversy by law professor, ] on ]
=== Other sources ===
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite news |url=http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/12/17/wikipedia_academia_and_seigenthaler.php |title=Misplaced Pages, academia and Seigenthaler |first=Danah |last=Boyd |work=Corante.com |date=December 17, 2005 |access-date=December 18, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051220135636/http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/12/17/wikipedia_academia_and_seigenthaler.php |archive-date=December 20, 2005 |url-status=dead }}
* {{cite news | last=Cooper | first=Charles | title=Misplaced Pages and the nature of truth | date=December 2, 2005 | publisher=CNET | url=http://news.cnet.com/Wikipedia+and+the+nature+of+truth/2010-1025_3-5979331.html | access-date=July 3, 2014 | archive-date=March 8, 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230308044658/https://www.cnet.com/news/ | url-status=live }}
* {{cite news | last=Lamb | first=Brian | title=Interview with John Seigenthaler | date=December 9, 2005 | publisher=C-SPAN Washington Journal}}
* {{cite news | last=Mielczarek | first=Natalia | title=Fake online biography created as 'joke' | date=December 11, 2005 | publisher=The Tennessean | url=http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051211/NEWS01/512110366/1006/NEWS }}
* {{cite news | last=Phillips | first=Kyra | title=''Live From...'' Transcript | date=December 5, 2005 | publisher=CNN | url=http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/05/lol.02.html | access-date=April 11, 2006 | archive-date=May 7, 2021 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210507162306/http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/05/lol.02.html | url-status=live }}, interview with John Seigenthaler and Jimmy Wales.
* {{cite news | author=NPR | title=Misplaced Pages joker eats humble pie | date=December 12, 2005 | publisher=BBC News | url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4520678.stm | access-date=April 11, 2006 | archive-date=September 6, 2019 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190906145402/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4520678.stm | url-status=live }}
* {{cite news | author=NPR | title=Misplaced Pages to Require Contributors to Register | date=December 6, 2005 | publisher=National Public Radio | url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5041077 | access-date=April 4, 2018 | archive-date=November 6, 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106220252/https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5041077 | url-status=live }}, ''Talk of the Nation'' story summary and radio broadcast.
* {{cite news | last=Seigenthaler | first=John | title=Truth can be at risk in the world of the web | date=December 4, 2005 | publisher=The Tennessean | url=http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051204/NEWS01/512040352/1006/NEWS }}{{dead link|date=October 2013 }}
* {{cite news | last=Terdiman | first=Daniel | title=Is Misplaced Pages safe from libel liability? | date=December 7, 2005 | publisher=CNET | url=https://www.cnet.com/news/is-wikipedia-safe-from-libel-liability/ | access-date=January 25, 2021 | archive-date=January 23, 2021 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210123084303/https://www.cnet.com/news/is-wikipedia-safe-from-libel-liability/ | url-status=live }}
{{refend}}

== External links ==
* by Prof. ] on '']''
* John Seigenthaler, : 49-minute presentation at ], October 21, 2011, C-Span Video Library
* by Katharine Q. Seelye of ''The New York Times''

{{Wikipediahistory}}

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{{Section link|de:John Seigenthaler senior#Misplaced Pages-Kontroverse}}
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Latest revision as of 12:17, 19 November 2024

2005 editorial controversy on Misplaced Pages

John Seigenthaler in October 2005

In May 2005, an unregistered editor created a hoax Misplaced Pages article about journalist John Seigenthaler. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy.

After the hoax was discovered and corrected later in September, Seigenthaler, a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, wrote in USA Today describing the article as an "Internet character assassination".

The incident raised questions about the reliability of Misplaced Pages and other websites with user-generated content that lack the legal accountability of traditional newspapers and published materials. In a December 13, 2005, interview, co-founder Jimmy Wales expressed his support for Misplaced Pages policy allowing articles to be edited by unregistered users, but announced plans to roll back their article creation privileges as part of a vandalism-control strategy. The incident ultimately led Misplaced Pages to introduce stricter referencing requirements for biographies of living persons.

Hoax

On May 26, 2005, a biographical article about John Seigenthaler was created by an anonymous Misplaced Pages editor that contained, in its entirety, the following text:

John Seigenthaler was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the ealry [sic] 1960's. [sic] For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assasinations [sic] of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.

John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984.

He started one of the country's largest public relations firm [sic] shortly thereafter.

Detection and correction

In September, Victor S. Johnson Jr., a friend of Seigenthaler's, discovered the article. After Johnson alerted him to the article, Seigenthaler emailed his friends and colleagues about it. On September 23, 2005, colleague Eric Newton copied Seigenthaler's official biography from the Freedom Forum website into Misplaced Pages. The following day, this biography was removed by a Misplaced Pages editor due to copyright violation and was replaced with a short original biography. Newton informed Seigenthaler of his action when he ran into Seigenthaler in November in New York at the Committee to Protect Journalists dinner.

In October 2005, Seigenthaler contacted the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, Jimmy Wales, who hid affected versions of the article history from public view in the Misplaced Pages version logs, in effect removing them from all but Misplaced Pages administrators' view. Some mirror websites not controlled by Misplaced Pages continued to display the older and inaccurate article for several weeks until the new version of the article was propagated to these other websites. In 2013, the hoax article was archived to Misplaced Pages:List of hoaxes on Misplaced Pages.

Anonymous editor identified

On November 29, 2005, Seigenthaler described the incident in an op-ed in USA Today, of which he had been the founding editorial director. In the article, he included a verbatim reposting of the false statements and called Misplaced Pages a "flawed and irresponsible research tool".

An expanded version was published several days later in The Tennessean, a daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee, where Seigenthaler had served in various capacities from beat reporter to chairman. In the article, Seigenthaler detailed his failed attempts to identify the anonymous person who posted the inaccurate biography. He reported that he had asked the poster's Internet service provider, BellSouth, to identify its user from the user's IP address. BellSouth refused to identify the user without a court order, suggesting that Seigenthaler file a John Doe lawsuit against the user, which Seigenthaler declined to do.

Daniel Brandt, a San Antonio activist who had started the website Misplaced Pages Watch to provide scrutiny of Misplaced Pages content in response to his objections to the article about him, looked up the IP address in Seigenthaler's article. He found that it related to Rush Delivery, a delivery service company in Nashville. He contacted Seigenthaler and the media and posted this information on his website.

On December 9, Brian Chase, an operations manager of Rush Delivery, admitted that he had posted the false biography because he believed Misplaced Pages to be "some sort of joke website". After confessing, Chase was fired from Rush Delivery. He presented a letter of apology to Seigenthaler, who successfully interceded with Rush Delivery to reinstate Chase. Seigenthaler confirmed that he would not file a lawsuit in relation to the incident. He said that he was concerned that "every biography on Misplaced Pages is going to be hit by this stuff—think what they'd do to Tom DeLay and Hillary Clinton, to mention two. My fear is that we're going to get government regulation of the Internet as a result."

Reactions

Seigenthaler's public reaction

In his November 29, 2005, USA Today editorial, Seigenthaler criticized Congress for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects ISPs and web sites from being held legally responsible for content posted by their customers and users:

Federal law also protects online corporations – BellSouth, AOL, MCI, Misplaced Pages, etc. – from libel lawsuits. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." That legalese means that, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for defaming attacks on citizens posted by others. And so 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. Congress has enabled them and protects them.

On December 5, 2005, Seigenthaler and Wales appeared jointly on CNN to discuss the matter. On December 6, 2005, the two were interviewed on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation radio program. Wales described a new policy that he had implemented in order to prevent unregistered users from creating new articles on the English-language Misplaced Pages, though their ability to edit existing articles was retained.

In the CNN interview, Seigenthaler also raised the spectre of increased government regulation of the Web:

Can I just say where I'm worried about this leading. Next year we go into an election year. Every politician is going to find himself or herself subjected to the same sort of outrageous commentary that hit me, and hits others. I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a result of that. And I tell you, I think if you can't fix it, both fix the history as well as the biography pages, I think it's going to be in real trouble, and we're going to have to be fighting to keep the government from regulating you.

In the December 6 joint NPR interview, Seigenthaler said that he did not want to have anything to do with Misplaced Pages because he disapproved of its basic assumptions. In an article Seigenthaler wrote for USA Today in late 2005, he said, "I am interested in letting many people know that Misplaced Pages is a flawed and irresponsible research tool." He also pointed out that the false information had been online for over four months before he was aware of it, and that he had not been able to edit the article to correct it. After speaking with Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimmy Wales, Seigenthaler said: "My 'biography' was posted May 26. On May 29, one of Wales' volunteers 'edited' it only by correcting the misspelling of the word 'early.' For four months, Misplaced Pages depicted me as a suspected assassin before I erased it from the website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks." Editing Misplaced Pages, he suggested, would lend it his sanction or approval, and he stated his belief that editing the article was not enough and instead he wanted to expose "incurable flaws" in the Misplaced Pages process and ethos.

On December 9, Seigenthaler appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal with Brian Lamb hosting. He said he was concerned that other pranksters would try to spoof members of Congress or other powerful figures in government, which may then prompt a backlash and turn back First Amendment rights on the Web.

In the June 2007 issue of Reason magazine, Seigenthaler also expressed concern about the lack of transparency underlined by Wales' removal of the hoax pages from the article's history page. He also stated that many of the comments left by users in the edit summaries were things he would not want his nine-year-old grandson to see.

Wikimedia Foundation reaction

In an interview with BusinessWeek on December 13, 2005, Wales discussed the reasons the hoax had gone undetected, and steps being taken to address them. He stated that one problem was that Misplaced Pages's use had grown faster than its self-monitoring system could comfortably handle, and that therefore new page creation would be restricted to account holders, addressing one of Seigenthaler's main criticisms.

He also gave his opinion that encyclopedias as a whole (whether print or online) were not usually appropriate for primary sources and should not be relied upon as authoritative (as some were doing), but that nonetheless Misplaced Pages was more reliable as "background reading" on subjects than most online sources. He stated that Misplaced Pages was a "work in progress".

A variety of changes were also made to Misplaced Pages's software and working practices, to address some of the issues arising. A new policy, 'biographies of living persons', was created on December 17, 2005; editorial restrictions, including reference requirements, were introduced on the creation of new Misplaced Pages articles; and new tracking categories for the biographies of living people were implemented.

The Foundation added a new level of "oversight" features to the MediaWiki software, accessible as of May 16, 2012, to around 37 experienced editors and Wikimedia staff members nominated by either Wales or the Arbitration Committee. This originally allowed for specific historical versions to be hidden from everyone (including Oversight editors), which then become unable to be viewed by anyone except developers via manual intervention, though the feature was later changed so that other Oversighters could view these revisions to monitor the tool's use. Currently such procedures are standardized by the 'Office actions' policy which states: "Sometimes the Wikimedia Foundation has to delete, protect or blank a page without going through the normal site/community process(es). These edits are temporary measures to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user."

Other reactions

In reaction to the controversy, The New York Times business editor Larry Ingrassia sent a memo to his staff commenting on the reliability of Misplaced Pages and writing, "We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper." Several other publications commented on the incident, often criticizing Misplaced Pages and its open editing model as unreliable, citing the Seigenthaler incident as evidence.

The scientific journal Nature conducted a study comparing the accuracy of Misplaced Pages and the Encyclopædia Britannica in 42 hard sciences–related articles in December 2005. The Misplaced Pages articles studied were found to contain four serious errors and 162 factual errors, omissions or misleading statements, while the Encyclopædia Britannica also contained four serious errors and 123 factual errors, omissions or misleading statements. Referring to the Seigenthaler incident and several other controversies, the authors wrote that the study "suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule."

See also

References

Notes

  1. Cohen, Noam (August 24, 2009). "Misplaced Pages to Limit Changes to Articles on People". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 3, 2012. Retrieved April 7, 2012.
  2. ^ Seigenthaler, John (November 29, 2005). "A false Misplaced Pages 'biography'". USA Today. Archived from the original on November 28, 2012. Retrieved October 27, 2013.
  3. "The State of the News Media 2006". The Project for Excellence in Journalism. September 14, 2009. Archived from the original on March 22, 2016.
  4. ^ Helm, Burt (December 13, 2005). "Misplaced Pages: "A Work in Progress"". BusinessWeek Online. Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on April 11, 2015. Retrieved October 16, 2013.
  5. "First edit to Seigenthaler's biography page". Misplaced Pages. May 26, 2005. Archived from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
  6. Carney, John I. (February 13, 2006). "Seigenthaler battles online encyclopedia". Shelbyville Times-Gazette. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved September 30, 2014.
  7. Archived version Archived June 9, 2022, at the Wayback Machine of the rewriting of the official biography.
  8. Two deletion log entries Archived November 22, 2021, at the Wayback Machine of the article.
  9. Dalby, Andrew (2009). The World and Misplaced Pages: How we are editing reality. Somerset: Siduri. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-9562052-0-9.
  10. Terdiman, Daniel. "Is Misplaced Pages safe from libel liability?". CNET. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved January 25, 2021.
  11. Terdiman, Daniel (December 15, 2005). "In search of the Misplaced Pages prankster". CNET. Archived from the original on March 8, 2023. Retrieved July 3, 2014.
  12. ^ Buchanan, Brian J. (November 17, 2006). "Founder shares cautionary tale of libel in cyberspace". First Amendment Center. Archived from the original on February 12, 2007. Retrieved October 4, 2011.
  13. "The wiki principle". The Economist. April 22, 2006. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on November 22, 2021. Retrieved November 22, 2021.
  14. "Man who posted false Misplaced Pages bio apologizes to Seigenthaler". First Amendment Center. June 4, 2007. Archived from the original on June 4, 2007. Retrieved July 12, 2022.
  15. Page, Susan (December 11, 2005). "Author apologizes for fake Misplaced Pages biography". USA Today. Archived from the original on December 28, 2011. Retrieved October 27, 2013.
  16. Mangu-Ward, Katherine (June 2007). "Misplaced Pages and Beyond: Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision". Reason Magazine: 20–29. Archived from the original on July 19, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  17. "Misplaced Pages and Seigenthaler; Restricted editing". Misplaced Pages Signpost. December 5, 2005. Archived from the original on June 16, 2022. Retrieved November 23, 2021.
  18. Ral315 (June 5, 2006). "New revision-hiding feature added". Misplaced Pages Signpost. Archived from the original on January 30, 2016. Retrieved February 23, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  19. "Office actions". Misplaced Pages. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on November 20, 2021. Retrieved November 23, 2021.
  20. "The New York Times Business editor Larry Ingrassia's memo "Wiki-whatdia?"". December 7, 2005. Archived from the original on March 8, 2006.
  21. Orlowski, Andrew (December 12, 2005). "There's no Misplaced Pages entry for 'moral responsibility'". The Register (UK). Archived from the original on June 16, 2006. Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  22. Terdiman, Daniel (December 5, 2005). "Growing pains for Misplaced Pages". CNET. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 3, 2014.
  23. Giles, Jim (December 15, 2005). "Special Report: Internet encyclopaedias go head to head". Nature. 438 (7070): 900–901. Bibcode:2005Natur.438..900G. doi:10.1038/438900a. PMID 16355180.

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