What is it with Wikipedia? by Bill Thompson of the BBC summarizes the recent fuss about the accuracy of the Wikipedia. For example John Seigenthaler wrote an opinion in USA Today titled USATODAY.com – A false Wikipedia ‘biography’ about the prank biography in the Wikipedia which suggested he was tied to the Kennedy assassinations. In his opinion piece he wirtes about his attempts to track down the joker who defamed him.
Today Google News had as a top story a joke news story in The Register by critic Andrew Orlowski that Wikipedia founder ‘shot by friend of Siegenthaler’. Orlowski references the Wikipedia on the shooting, though I can’t find the reference now. Working my way back through the Wikipedia history for the Jimmy Wales entry shows that today (Dec. 18) there have been an unuasual number of edits on the page including spurious ones with graphic pictures. His entry has become a site for contest and Orlowski is mocking it/Jimmy for and with this. Orlowski compares the Wikipedia to a roleplaying game for wannabe encyclopedia writers, but there is another game afoot which is more serious, and that is the game of the hack.
Is this the end of the open Wikipedia? Will it be hacked into forcing people to register to edit? Is it the nature of open systems that if sucessful they get vandalized?