[WikiEN-l] RE: No wonder people don't realize...

Mon Dec 12 17:33:35 UTC 2005

> From: Steve Bennett <wiki at stevage.com>
> Hi all,
>   I've always had my bookmark set to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page,
> where it's prominently written "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free
> encyclopedia that anyone can edit".  However, for any visitor who comes
> directly through www.wikipedia.org, this is not the case.  

It's far worse than that. Mirrors usually do not say "edit this page,"
and frequently serve up Wikipedia content with titles such as
"Encyclopedia article about thus-and-such." 

And it's going to get even worse. As I noted elsewhere, dozens of news
sources have published stories like one in Information Week. Their
story title was "Wikipedia Tightens Rules For Posting" and their
subhead was "After an article incorrectly linked the assassination of
Robert F. Kennedy to a former administrative assistant, Wikipedia no
longer accepts new submissions from anonymous contributors."

Now_we_ all understand that logged-in users are just as anonymous as
unlogged-in users. And we all know that the headline is a bad summary,
and that anyone that carefully reads Information Week's article will
see that's not what Jimbo said. (He said "A person now has to register
with the site before contributing an article. By doing this, site
managers can at least determine whether a person associated with a
specific user ID is submitting false information, and prevent articles
from being submitted by that registrant.")

But I'll bet that's not what 99% of the people reading these news
articles think. Just wait until the next Seigenthaler incident happens,
and the victim finds that... as perceived by the outside world...
Wikipedia says _again_ that it does not know who created the article,
after the public thought it had said that promised that it would "no
longer accepts new submissions from anonymous contributors." 

Will the general public accept this as good faith? Yes, about as good
faith as Clinton's statement that he never had sex with that woman
Monica Lewinsky.