

Wikipedia tells author he isn't a credible source on book he wrote - ChuckMcM
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/wikipedia-told-philip-roth-hes-not-credible-source-on-book-he-wrote/

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ChuckMcM
This is a great example of one of the new challenges of crowd sourced works.
Basically Wikipedia is stuck between a rock and a hard place, if they let the
Author run rampant through the article changing things, well he could lie, but
they don't and they lose relevant data.

In the "bad" case the author removes or rewrite critical commentary or errors
in their own writing, in the "good" case they correct facts (like Roth is
trying to do). But it is hard to apriori distinguish the two.

What Wikipedia is missing has been some sort of formal editorial board for
which potential editors can escalate disputes to get them resolved.
Interestingly such systems exist today as judicial systems and re-implementing
them here would seem to be motivated by the desire to get the best possible
work out.

The 'fix' points out another problem though, which is Wikipedia has a feedback
loop issue. Stories abound of things that were put into Wikipedia, contested
because they didn't have external sources, had some print publication make the
same claim (because _that_ author saw it on Wikipedia) and then validating the
original claim with that new 'source.' That is pretty messed up.

But for all of that, Wikipedia is often a great jumping off point for finding
out about something if it has a few links collected.

