Tuesday, October 5, 2004
Lyndon LaRouche founded Wikipedia?
From The Lantern, a student publication at Ohio State University, via Joi's blog:
LaRouche, an outspoken political activist, set the record for consecutive attempts at the presidency by running eight times. He started Wikipedia.com, a Web site functioning as both a free encyclopedia and a wiki community, which allows users to add information to posted articles. He is known to be a promoter of conspiracy theories and has frequently been accused of being a fascist and an anti-Semite - claims he has denied. In 1988 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations but served only five.Link. In contrast, the wikipedia site says:
Wikipedia was started on January 15, 2001 by founders Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger, and a few enthusiastic English-language collaborators.This is certainly news to me if it's true. I always thought wikipedia was created by googly-eyed, multitentacled alien overlords, instead. As always, I invite responses from Wikipedia... or Mr. LaRouche... or the alien overlords.
BoingBoing reader Nick Brogna, who joins me in saluting our alien overlords adds, "It's rather amusing that, aside from the part about him, er, founding Wikipedia, the other lines have been copied verbatim from the Wikipedia article on him."
Update (03-06-2005): Joktan (Joe) Kwiatkowski says:
Xeni: I am the journalist that you referenced in your blog entry for October 05, 2004 titled "Lyndon LaRouche founded Wikipedia?" -- The issue was over this portion of my story on the LaRouche political action committee:"LaRouche, an outspoken political activist, set the record for consecutive attempts at the presidency by running eight times. He started Wikipedia.com, a Web site functioning as both a free encyclopedia and a wiki community, which allows users to add information to posted articles. He is known to be a promoter of conspiracy theories and has frequently been accused of being a fascist and an anti-Semite - claims he has denied. In 1988 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations but served only five."
The change was done by a copy editor at our newspaper without explanation, and not myself. This was the correct form:
"LaRouche, an outspoken political activist, set the record for consecutive attempts at the presidency by running eight times. He is known to be a promoter of conspiracy theories and has frequently been accused of being a fascist and an anti-Semite - claims he has denied. In 1988 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations but served only five, according to Wikipedia.com, a free online encyclopedia."
As you can see, there is absolutely no way that anyone could have confused a reference to Wikipedia.com with that of an individual founding the web site. That editor had personal problems and was known for changing information without telling others. She also had conflicts with other editors, and I was not the only person she affected. She is no longer at The Lantern.
This was an extremely sensitive issue for me, since it was the first time I had submitted an article for The Lantern, and I was unfairly characterized as inaccurate.
Stories at newspapers go through the hands of different editors before they are printed on paper. However, I understand that not many people know this, and therefore it is easier to ridicule the writer rather than investigate the issue.
You also said that a reader of yours, Nick Brogna, observed that lines from the Wikipedia article on LaRouche were copied “verbatim,” which also is unfair and inaccurate. I paraphrased information from the article and I also attributed it in my original copy, as you can read above, but because the editor changed it, people were not able to see this.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:56:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
