John Seigenthaler predicted the future of Wikipedia

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ylevental
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John Seigenthaler predicted the future of Wikipedia

Post by ylevental » Sun Apr 03, 2022 11:33 pm

I am sure that you know that in 2005, an anonymous troll said on Wikipedia that he was a suspect in the Kennedy assassinations. During an interview on the matter, he said the following (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... y_incident):
Can I just say where I'm worried about this leading. Next year we go into an election year. Every politician is going to find himself or herself subjected to the same sort of outrageous commentary that hit me, and hits others. I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a result of that. And I tell you, I think if you can't fix it, both fix the history as well as the biography pages, I think it's going to be in real trouble, and we're going to have to be fighting to keep the government from regulating you.
Basically, Wikipedia likes to lure in trolls by letting them spam for a while. Then, they start blocking large IP address ranges and accounts, putting the blame on the trolls. This makes Wikipedia far harder to edit than it should be.

R.I.P. John Seigenthaler. He was truly ahead of his time.

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wexter
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Re: John Seigenthaler predicted the future of Wikipedia

Post by wexter » Mon Apr 04, 2022 1:44 am

What is amazing to me is that

1) this is an entry in a website that claims (falsely) to be "encyclopedia!"
2) that folks still diddle with this nonsense to this day;

Some recent diddling;

curprev 14:41, 2 March 2022‎ Graham87 talk contribs‎ 22,724 bytes −72‎ fix link from elsewhere in article undo
curprev 04:36, 2 March 2022‎ InternetArchiveBot talk contribs‎ 22,796 bytes +76‎ Rescuing 0 sources and tagging 1 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0.8.6) (Whoop whoop pull up - 9593 undo
9 February 2022
curprev 17:58, 9 February 2022‎ Lomrjyo (public) talk contribs‎ 22,720 bytes +4‎ c/e undo Tag: 2017 wikitext editor
31 January 2022
curprev 17:34, 31 January 2022‎ Citation bot talk contribs‎ 22,716 bytes +5‎ Add: newspaper. Removed parameters. Some additions/deletions were parameter name changes. | Use this bot. Report bugs. | Suggested by Abductive | #UCB_toolbar undo
29 January 2022

The human-tools waiting their time on this nonsense need to get a life.
Wikipedia - "Barely competent and paranoid. There’s a hell of a combination."

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ericbarbour
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Re: John Seigenthaler predicted the future of Wikipedia

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Apr 04, 2022 4:20 am

The worst part: Seigenthaler's media attention made Wikipedia MORE popular, not less. The media circus encouraged hundreds of thousands of people to mess with it. For good AND for bad reasons.

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