Ken Lay Dead; Wikipedia Confused

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...070501068.html

Quote:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The death of former Enron Corp. chief Ken Lay on Wednesday underscored the challenges facing online encyclopedia Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/), which as the news was breaking offered a variety of causes for his death.

Lay, 64, died of a heart attack early on Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said, just six weeks after a jury found him guilty of fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history.

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, added news of Lay's death to his online biography shortly after news outlets began reporting it at around 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT).

At 10:06 a.m., Wikipedia's entry for Lay said he died "of an apparent suicide."

At 10:08, it said he died at his Aspen, Colorado home "of an apparent [[heart attack] or suicide.]."

Within the same minute, it said the cause of death was "yet to be determined."

At 10:09 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 10.12 a.m., this was replaced by: "According to Lay's pastor the cause was a 'massive coronary' heart attack."

By 10:39 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." This statement was later dropped.

By early Wednesday afternoon, the entry said Lay was pronounced dead at Aspen Valley Hospital, citing the Pitkin, Colorado sheriff's department. It said he apparently died of a massive heart attack, citing KHOU-TV in Houston.

Officials at Wikipedia did not immediately return phone and e-mail requests for comment. Its Web site warns users that "newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism." Wikipedia says it has 13,000 active writers and editors.

Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who replaced him as chief executive, were convicted for their roles in Enron's 2001 collapse. Both were awaiting sentencing and faced long prison terms.

Compare this article to the speech given by Jason Scott at Notacon back in April.

Ken Lay's death really isn't the issue I'd like to see discussed (although feel free to discuss it).-- Wikipedia is.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Kalekkan

For instance, require users to put in credit card information (for authentication purposes) when they create an account. This way if someone is an abusive editor, they can be banned not by their wiki account username, not by their ip address, but by their actually identity.

Do the words "identity theft" and "credit card fraud" mean anything to you?



Wikipedia is not a news site? O RLY?

Seriously, read the speech I linked. I think it will elucidate a lot of this. Especially the problems in calling it an "encyclopedia" and trying to make it "the compendium of all human knowledge". As Mr. Scott says, it would be one thing if the site was called "Jimbo's Big Bag o' Trivia." But it's not.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't really think it ever did. I remember two years ago or so before Wikipedia really became huge I went there and a lot of stuff was just plain wrong. And what wasn't was of dubious authenticity anyway.

I find articles that cite their sources are interesting, mostly as just a collection of links on the subject though.

The scary part is that some people actually think Wikipedia is a viable source for information and try to use it on papers. That makes me really afraid.

While I laud you for using the doublespeak-esque term groupthink, could you explain more what you mean by it, MK? I'm not entirely clear on how you're using it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Looks like you obviously didn't click on my link, since I linked to Wikinews.

Also, Wikinews is run by the same people as Wikipedia. I don't see how it's any less relevant.

You make a good point about Wikipedia just being a bunch of links to other news sources. One of the three founding principles of Wikipedia is that original research does not belong on Wikipedia. That logically extends beyond scientific research to journalism as well.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by acid

Yes, Wikipedia is fallible. By it's very nature it's greatest strength is it's greatest weakness. However this just strengthens the idea that the system works.

Six minutes. It took six minutes from the time someone posted wrong information to the time that it was corrected. This does nothing but prove that the self-policing style of wikipedia does, infact, work. Had the information stayed up for weeks, I can see where there would be an issue. However it took less time to correct this, fairly major, news story than it would take me to make a sandwich.

And what if someone accessed that page during those six minutes, and didn't go back? They would come out with the wrong idea, perhaps even that he killed himself because he felt guilty. That's bad journalism.

The main point I think the original article was getting at is that in journalism, you are responsible to get the story right the first time so your readers don't get the wrong impression. Printing a lie about someone is called libel. It's a real crime. Look it up.

RacinReaver: Thanks. I've heard the term used before, but was never given a clear definition. The more you know.

I was speaking idiomatically.