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Irony: Reuters Article Slamming Wikipedia For Corrections... Needs Correcting
from the funny-how-that-works dept
There are a group of folks who just love to criticize Wikipedia -- usually because they want it to be something it's not. As long as people understand the methodology in creating Wikipedia entries, there's really no issue at all. That's why it seemed so bizarre last week, after reports of Ken Lay's death showed up, that Reuters ran what was a pretty useless article about how Ken Lay's Wikipedia changed rapidly after reports of his death came out -- and some of those changes were somewhat different than the eventual story that came out. There's nothing particularly newsworthy there. Like any breaking story, some of the details may get confused at the beginning, but as the details become clearer the story gets crafted. Plenty of mainstream news stories have experienced the same exact thing. In fact... it happened in this very Reuters article. Slashdot points to someone who noticed the irony over the fact that Reuters needed to issue its very own correction on the story after it got its sources confused. What's even more ironic is, of course, that there are still plenty of versions of the uncorrected Reuters piece out there, but over at Wikipedia you can easily look back at the history yourself and see the corrections. So, where's Reuters breathless article on how Reuters' mistake "underscores the challenges" facing a news agency like Reuters "which as the news was breaking offered a variety of [sources] for [its story]"?
Reader Comments
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LOL FIRST POST
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lol i'm dorpus, i bet mike will correct this post because techdirt is dumb but i post comments all the time anyway
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dou che
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It's not good for business, being a journalist, to say, "There's nothing really newsworthy there," when talking about your topic. Just a bit of advice.
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Re:
It's not good for business, being a journalist, to say, "There's nothing really newsworthy there," when talking about your topic. Just a bit of advice.
Hmm?
1. It's not good for whose business? It's not impacting ours any.
2. "Being a journalist." We're not journalists. Never claimed to be.
3. The point was that the *original* story wasn't newsworthy -- which is partly why we didn't bother posting it. What did seem interesting and newsworthy, though, was what happened afterwards. Hence this post.
4. Thanks for the advice.
:)
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Anonymous Coward: you should try reading before posting comments.
Mike: thanks for the post and comment. good points all around.
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This is a step up from a previous Reuters article on Wikipedia.
I never did see a correction on that article.
-cmh
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Ban em all
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wait a second
Since when did wikapedia become a news source? I thought the goal of wikapedia was to be a collaborative encyclopedia not a replacement to the AP or BBC.
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Wikipedia = HHGTTG
Wikipedia is trying to be the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. A universal repository of human knowledge about everything written by everyone. It is in no way universal truth. It is not reporting or covering a story.
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Re: Wikipedia = HHGTTG
hmmm, that's actually a pretty good analogy really. Mostly Harmless at any rate. heh
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Re: HHGTTG
hahaha +rep for the funny
Don't Panic!
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Duh. Not a very unbiased opinion in this article, but then, it's hard to be unbiased in something like this - it's like the pot calling the kettle black ... except in this case, the kettle isn't black... it's shiny, stainless steel ...
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