I've been reading the 2006 edition of Thomas Friedman's
The World is Flat and recently came across his account of the
Wikipedia bio of
John Seigenthaler, Sr. Friedman describes the falsification of Seigenthaler's biography by unknown contributor(s). Seigenthaler served as an administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; his Wikipedia bio asserted that Seigenthalter "was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother Bobby." To make matters worse, Friedman notes that this inaccurate Wikipedia information turned up in other information sources, such as
Reference.com.
To say that the community corrected itself is countered by the fact, as Seigenthaler wrote in a
USA Today editorial, that this malicously false information remained publicly visible for more than three months.
I've contributed to Wikipedia in only one area, information related to naval nuclear reactors. I wrote the core of the definition for
S1W, the world's first submarine reactor. (Months later, I found that definition degraded by either automated or human reviewing that created a couple of specific problems.) I hope to contribute more...I am a little disappointed over some of the other reactor definitions that I've discovered, such as that for
A2W, which simultaneously provides extremely detailed specifications and lacks
any listed references. I guess my own experience in this narrow area is a microcosm of the strengths and weaknesses of the medium.
