Wikipedia Founder Edits Own BioBy Evan Hansen
06:21 PM Dec. 19, 2005 PT
Sleuthing into the accuracy of the open-source web encyclopedia known as Wikipedia has led to the door of its founder, Jimmy Wales.
Public edit logs reveal that Wales has changed his own Wikipedia bio 18 times, deleting phrases describing former Wikipedia employee Larry Sanger as a co-founder of the site.
Wales has also repeatedly revised the description of a search site he founded called Bomis, which included a section with adult photos called "Bomis Babes."
The changes were reported Monday by technology writer Rogers Cadenhead on his blog, Workbench, spurring Sanger to launch a dialogue on Wikipedia about revisionist history.
In an interview with Wired News, Wales acknowledged he's made changes to his bio, but said the edits were made to correct factual errors and provide a more rounded version of events.
While he said that Wikipedia generally frowns on people editing entries about themselves, there is no hard and fast rule against it.
"People shouldn't do it, including me," he said. "I wish I hadn't done it. It's in poor taste.... People have a lot of information about themselves but staying objective is difficult. That's the trade-off in editing entries about yourself.... If you see a blatant error or misconception about yourself, you really want to set it straight."
According to technology writer Cadenhead, who ferreted out the record of changes, Wales has altered sentences that gave Larry Sanger credit for co-founding Wikipedia seven times.
For example, on Oct. 28, he changed "On [[January 15]], [[2001]], Wales and Sanger set up [[Wikipedia]]" to "On [[January 15]], [[2001]], Wales set up [[Wikipedia]]."
Wales later returned twice to make similar changes when Wikipedia editors revised the edited text to give Sanger credit.
"I must say I am amused," Sanger wrote in a posting on Wikipedia on Monday. "Having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will out."
In fact, Wikipedia's own guidelines caution against editing your own bio as it "can open the door to rather immature behavior and loss of dignity."
Wales admitted he made the changes, but argued the edits were meant merely to emphasize a technical point about the specific roles the two had at the time.
"It's very neutral," he said. "The point wasn't to write Larry Sanger out of the story. I think Larry doesn't get enough credit."
Cadenhead also focused on edits regarding a website Wales once ran called Bomis, which included a section with adult photos called "Bomis Babes."
Cadenhead said other Wikipedia editors described Bomis Babes as "soft-core pornography," but Wales changed it to "adult content section" on Sept. 4, and later twice removed references to pornography, instead describing it as "Bomis Babes blog based on Slashcode."
Wales admitted to changing references to Bomis Babes several times. But he said he was correcting an error, and disputed the characterization of Bomis Babes as soft porn.
"If R-rated movies are soft porn, it was porn. In other words, no, it was not. That description is inaccurate," he told Wired News in a phone interview on Monday.
Self-editing by Wales comes amid scrutiny of weaknesses in Wikipedia, a public site that allows any registered user to edit and change entries on an encyclopedic range of topics.
The site has won praise for its range and depth, as well as its ability to find and fix errors. But it has also faced criticism over self-policing policies that leave quality control largely in the hands of the community at large, rather than selected experts.
Criticism came to a head this month over erroneous information included in a bio of journalist John Siegenthaler Sr., a founding editor of USA Today, linking him to the Kennedy assassinations. The fake poster, Brian Chase, admitted to planting the reference as a joke, according to Associated Press reports.
In order to improve the accuracy of listings and crack down on vandalism, Wikipedia next month plans to institute changes that will identify high-risk articles and prevent newly registered users from editing them.
In addition, the site will create a state of semi-protection for some stories, that will delay publication of edits, for example, for up to 10 minutes.
Wales said the changes do not represent a paradigm shift, but are merely tweaks aimed at improving a system he said works well.
"Over the past three years, the quality of Wikipedia has improved dramatically," he said, crediting a core group of 600 to 1,000 contributors for maintaining the integrity of up to 75 percent of the site's entries.
A recent comparison between Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica by Nature found error rates between the two publications were comparable in a number of expert subjects.
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