A bit of interesting reading here

A false Wikipedia 'biography'

By John Seigenthaler

"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General 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, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." - Wikipedia

This is a highly personal story about Internet character assassination. It could be your story.

I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable. There was more:

"John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter."

At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and Answers.com.

I had heard for weeks from teachers, journalists and historians about "the wonderful world of Wikipedia," where millions of people worldwide visit daily for quick reference "facts," composed and posted by people with no special expertise or knowledge - and sometimes by people with malice.

At my request, executives of the three websites now have removed the false content about me. But they don't know, and can't find out, who wrote the toxic sentences.

Anonymous author

I phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder and asked, "Do you ... have any way to know who wrote that?"

"No, we don't," he said. Representatives of the other two websites said their computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from Wikipedia, never checking whether it is false or factual.

Naturally, I want to unmask my "biographer." And, I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool.

But searching cyberspace for the identity of people who post spurious information can be frustrating. I found on Wikipedia the registered IP (Internet Protocol) number of my "biographer"- 65-81-97-208. I traced it to a customer of BellSouth Internet. That company advertises a phone number to report "Abuse Issues." An electronic voice said all complaints must be e-mailed. My two e-mails were answered by identical form letters, advising me that the company would conduct an investigation but might not tell me the results. It was signed "Abuse Team."

Wales, Wikipedia's founder, told me that BellSouth would not be helpful. "We have trouble with people posting abusive things over and over and over," he said. "We block their IP numbers, and they sneak in another way. So we contact the service providers, and they are not very responsive."

After three weeks, hearing nothing further about the Abuse Team investigation, I phoned BellSouth's Atlanta corporate headquarters, which led to conversations between my lawyer and BellSouth's counsel. My only remote chance of getting the name, I learned, was to file a "John or Jane Doe" lawsuit against my "biographer." Major communications Internet companies are bound by federal privacy laws that protect the identity of their customers, even those who defame online. Only if a lawsuit resulted in a court subpoena would BellSouth give up the name.

Little legal recourse

Federal law also protects online corporations - BellSouth, AOL, MCI Wikipedia, 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 disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others.

Recent low-profile court decisions document that Congress effectively has barred defamation in cyberspace. Wikipedia's website acknowledges that it is not responsible for inaccurate information, but Wales, in a recent C-Span interview with Brian Lamb, insisted that his website is accountable and that his community of thousands of volunteer editors (he said he has only one paid employee) corrects mistakes within minutes.

My experience refutes that. 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, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin before Wales erased it from his website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks.

In the C-Span interview, Wales said Wikipedia has "millions" of daily global visitors and is one of the world's busiest websites. His volunteer community runs the Wikipedia operation, he said. He funds his website through a non-profit foundation and estimated a 2006 budget of "about a million dollars."

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.

When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people."

For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia.





JustinTimeTotripJr

PS.... Chris..... The entries on Answers.com and Reference.com for you, seem pretty legit.

Thanks for that little tidbit of information.


I have made the case to the Wikipedia representative here that it is Wikipedia who suffers when they become the National Enquirer rather than a fact provider.

Strginparadise himeself is a left wing supporter and he is following the arguments and posting to more and more things that I said that he thought would hurt me if the general public found out.

Crass and blatently obvious are intentions of the post.

That's why i let it stand and don't bother fighting Wikipedia over it. It provides the example that Wikipedia is a politcal propaganda tool and not a "neutral" observer as they claim.

The FBI once tried to get Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide by threating to expose secret tapes they made. Dr. King had made "off color" jokes with personal friends in hotel rooms and the like.

Imagine if Wikipedia's entry pointed to all the negative things like that instead of Dr. King's accomplishment.

It would not take much to distort the picture of the man as a whole.

That is what Wikipedia does to me.


Like I said

Axestogrind Inc is what Wikipedia has proven itself to be to me.

Stephen Harper is going to re-open the gay-marriage issue. He would not be doing that unless the pollsters were telling him the issue would enjoy strong support.

This wiki fuck as I call him thinks he is hurting me, but I think his attack will garner me more support plus validate my claim that the bias left-wingers in charge portray me in a negative light.

This Wiki fuck laughed when I told him I would hurt Wiki one day if I have an opportunity.

I would think this story on Google is taking the credibility of Wikipedia down a notch.

I made the case that reputation is all any of us enjoy and that Wikipedia thought nothing of destorying mine. Why would I hesitate to destory theirs?

Here is an example of what I was speaking about. A couple of more people of integrity stand up and give Wiki the thumbs down and that will be that. They will go to the ash-can of history, whcih is where that rag belongs in my humble opinion.

Once more I cant thank you enough for that post.

That has nothing to do with your situation Buors. What did Wikipedia say about you that was not true? I read your description and everything was verifiable. What Buors does not seem to like is being accurately quoted. If what they wrote about Buors was untru, there might be a comparison here, fear of the truth, how ever, does not hold.

It is also true that the portray is from a left-wing perspective so it resonates as truth to you.

I fear not what Wikipedia has to say about me. Let it stand as a shining example to the world.

I challange their assertion that they are neutral.

Do you think the portrayal is neutral Chris?

I think it reflects a left wing bias.

So it is Wikipedia who will destroy their own credibility.

It is true that Dr. Matin Luther King Jr. told "whitey" jokes. Does that mean he ought to be portrayed as a racist?

I wonder if Dr. King is on the record on what he thought of homosexuals.

Let's see, we know he was a Reverand, a deeply religious man who was married, and a Southern Baptist I think.

I would venture that Dr. King would not have been kind in his personal opinions of homosexuality. That is a guess based on what I believe the average Southern type baptist believes. I could be wrong.

Maybe we can research what Rosa Parks thought of homosexuals too and fix both their pages at Wikipedia eh!

Are you saying calling someone a homophobia is left wing?

"It is true that Dr. Matin Luther King Jr. told "whitey" jokes. Does that mean he ought to be portrayed as a racist?"

I think understanding who King is requires the whole picture. In his case the vast amount of good he accomplished overshadows a few small indiscretions, in your case, not so much.

If King or Parks were alive today and made the type of homophobic comments you have, they would make news headlines. Farakan's homophobic statements have garnered international attention and he lost a lot of credibility due to such outrageous statements and will leiely never make it into real politics as a result.

You know better than that Bennett. Homophobe is a psychaitric stigmatization.

People of my opinion are found across the politcal spectrum.

Bev Dejarlais was removed from caucus for voting against same sex marriage. Many liberals were against the idea as were many Conservatives.

But I'm not blind.


The issue is portrayed as the left being "most" tolerant, with the middle, the liberals portrayed as tolerant and the CPC as intolerant. Those are the implications in social matters. That is why there is such an identifiable groups as "social conservatives." Bible thumpers for short.

So when Wikipedia draws attention to my personal views on homosexuality for all the world to see the inferances are clear. The person clearly wants to expose what they percieve as a politcal weakness. Same with the US Civil War and the Destroy Canada arguments pointed too.

That is all calculated to be be damaging, not neutral.

Politcal propaganda as it were. Proof positive they pick sides.

That does not make sense. There have been right wing homosexuals. Look at Cheney's daughter and Janet Reno.

Homophobia is a term for a petty prejudicem, one which by all definations you hold.

Martin Luther King Jr. never was a politican. The were men of their time too.


The more I think about it the more I see that the black/white psychaitric idea of homophobia needs to be addressed so that people like me are not mis-labeled.

I don't believe for a moment Martin Luther King was a racist because he told a few off-color jokes. King Jr. never did commit suicide so he must have believed he could survive such an accusation had J.Edgar Hoover carried through on the threat.

I survived the allegation. I learned a lot. Next time go for the juglar and ask the reporter very personal questions like why they won't do homosexual acts if there ain't nothing wrong with it. Then I will proceed to undermine the moral authority of psychaitry on which the homophobia arguments rests.

Stephen Harper will be speaking in very couched terms.

Would not you prefer he just spoke plain English?

He can't because "homophobe" is one of those words that there is no defense to.

It's like the word dangerous....Who can be for dangerous drugs?

Who can be for homophobia?

There is no middle ground in the framing of the argument right from the get go.

I am going to construct a letter to google.

That's how much I fear what Wikipedia has to say, I want to draw attention to how they paint me. Mostly because I would love the opportunity to take the psychaitry does nothing but stigmatize argument mainstream.

I'm out to destroy the therapeutic state and if the charge of homophobe has to be destroyed in order for that to happen I won't hesitate for a heartbeat.

This is the lead story in the Winnipeg Sun today.


'Sexsomnia' defence works
It wasn't rape -- it was sleep sex. In an unusual case in Scarborough court yesterday, Jan Luedecke was acquitted of sexual assault after a judge ruled he was asleep during the attack -- a disorder known as "sexsomnia."

On it goes. I think the public is getting weary of Sexology. I will order Sex By Prescription for reference.

My LTE to the Sun.

Theories like "sexsomnia" is an example of why Dr. Thomas Szasz has steadfastly argued for forty years to kick psychiatrists out of the court room.

Opinions on the psychiatric state of a person's mind have about as much business in our courts as opinions on the religious state of a person's soul have.

Women's groups are not the only outfits that should be outraged. Psychiatry has been insidiously encroaching into all aspects of our daily lives for about 100 years now. The psychiatrists are the high priest of the therapeutic state which evolved from the theologic state.

Whatever happened to the state of liberty? It was sacrificed to the soul doctors of the secular state. Social control is all done through medicine today and it is even more ugly than when we done it through religion. Does anybody believe this stuff anymore? Every theory psychiatry ever had has lost when put to the water test. Only the fact psychiatry's lies are legislated into truth through various Mental Health Acts allows this chicanery to go on. Repeal is the cure.


Chris Buors


Only a Szasian could make those kind of arguments.

My beef Chris, is that I do not seek the challange of putting homosexuals "in their place." That is for some other activist. Marc Emery makes the case for where their place is, in a catagory with all kinds of other people that we don't have to like if we don't want to because of our moral convictions.


Every person in Canada who votes for the Liberals is voting for more corruption. Canadians are corrupt beyond redemption in my opinion. There will be no going going back to liberty so it is my humble opinion that Liberty stands a better chance if Quebec separates and Canada soon after falls apart. I won't cry. But that does not mean I work towards that end. I did what I could to try and stop the socialism to no avail.

And the Civil War position that the South should have won is based on the Jeffersonain Republic model of governance that I cherish above all other polical systems yet devised.

That is not the way the argument is framed either.

It's all shotgun approach without any context. Essentially the same style you use so I can see why the Wikipedia entry would appeal to you as "well written."

So you see the comparrisons. Dr. King's personal views on homosexuals is as relevant to the record as mine are.

That is unless every politician portrayed has their personal opinions on homosexuals published there and they don't.

So I am singled out for purely propaganda reasons.

With a bias view anybody can be portrayed in a negative light. My views on homosexuality are quit mainstream but by even mentioning them a picture of intolerance is projected.

Evil personified is what the metaphor is in my humble opinion. Homophobe deserves the same crdebility as sexsomnia! The Sexologists have run amok for just as little to long.

Who knows Chris? Maybe Wikipedia will inadverently skyrocket me to fame. One just never knows.

I will compose an LTE to google and whoever else is interested in Wikipedia flamings.

"Next time go for the juglar and ask the reporter very personal questions like why they won't do homosexual acts if there ain't nothing wrong with it."

To not choose to have Gay sex does not mean you think those acts "immoral", "sinful" or "disgusting", but rather it can also mean one prefers hetrosexuality or asexuality over homosexuality, purely due to reasons of preference, as in the same way one might prefer one type of food over another. That is the underlying probelm with your arguement, you label homosexuality with dispicable terms.