Wednesday, November 10, 2004

The New York Times > Arts > Critic's Notebook: Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History

The New York Times > Arts > Critic's Notebook: Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History: "Collaborative history is a wild ride, as the recent presidential election demonstrated. In October readers were editing and re-editing the entries for President Bush and Senator John Kerry at breakneck speed. And some of it wasn't exactly editing. If you clicked on a picture of Bush in his National Guard uniform to get an enlarged version, you would see a picture of Hitler.
By the end of October, a Wikipedia administrator from New Orleans decided to put both candidates' entries under protection until after the election: no one could edit a page on either candidate without the changes' being vetted on a discussion page. Thus Senator Kerry and President Bush took their places next to the other untouchables in the Wikipedia: Ariel Sharon, Osama bin Laden, Rush Limbaugh and Salvador Allende."

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