Keeping news of kidnapping off Wikipedia

The New York Times asked Jimmy Wales, a co-founder of Wikipedia, for his help when David Rohde was kidnapped and the news was being posted.
The New York Times

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[Vurk]

I guess Al Quaida sympathizers live everywhere, even in Florida.

[PhaseDMA]

A fact is a fact. It's not up for debate. If you like it or don't is another story.

Not to mention kidnappings are pretty significant events.

Clearly as this article proves the fight over including or not including it on his page gained more exposure then the initial edit ever would have if it was left alone.

Some people still like to live in reality and not some candy coated sham of a life.

[groink_hi]

It is the few idiotic and hot-tempered Wikipedia contributors that ruin it for the others. It is examples like this why bloggers and Wikipedians will never be true journalists. For Wales and the other hand-picked administrators to handle the issue like they did - the reverts and the locking without explanation did look very odd, based on the log entries. Wikipedia is a great source, BUT it lacks the ability to conduct communication with confidentiality between contributors. It isn't like the NYT editor could hold a conference call with Wikipedians and gain their cooperation. Instead, the contributors have the mentality of cable news or tabloid reports where it is a competition for who can break the news on Wikipedia first. I even see on the Michael Jackson articles contributors who are patting themselves on the back for breaking the cardiac arrest and later his death news. In short, Wikipedia is very bloody and brutal, and I think many of the long-term contributors have emotional bruises and scars. Again, great source, but also it is always a good idea to reference a second or third resource to get the truth.

[OnceYouGoMac]

I can't help but wonder if had not been a reporter that was kidnapped, would The Times and other newspapers agree to suppress the news of this kidnapping from their own publications to safe-guard the hostage. In the effort to sell papers I'm sure that they would have been scrambling over each other to get the news out as widely as possible.

Nice to see some humanity there, even if it's only looking after one of their own.

[codynews]

There has been news the military has asked them not to report for the safety of thousands of troops and innocent civilians in Iraq.

When it comes to the military, they're falling over themselves to be the first to report no matter how many service men and woman may be put at risk/

But when it's one of their OWN, it's totally different.

Don't you find that a little interesting?

Cody

[codynews]

What the hell is wrong with some people? Why was this idiot in Florida so intent on making this update? What was in it for him? He seemed pretty bitter/hostile at the editors removing his info.

I made a correction to a page once and it got changed back. I'm not sure why but I never bothered to keep changing it and changing it and calling people "boy genius".

Tools...

Cody

[groink_hi]

It is more common than rare on Wikipedia. I call it "edit rage". It is somewhat like bidding rage on eBay, where a bidder keeps attempting to outbid others for an item, and end up paying more than the item's actual worth. Contributors on Wikipedia are good most of the time, but some of them are indeed hot-blooded and treat Wikipedia more as a contest, to see who can break news the fastest. I've seen articles get locked for weeks; the second (literally) the article is open, the same contributor makes the same edit. It is as if he was like a condor, circling around a prey that is about to die, waiting to dive in and finish the job.

And then there are one-issue advocate contributors within Wikipedia. One editor who tried contributing to the iPhone article kept stomping all over the other contributors. Despite 100 other contributors coming to a major consensus, this one contributor would not stop. Another example of edit rage. It is these guys who just can't walk away and go onto something else.

[Gorbag]

"Times executives believed that publicity would raise Rohde's value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival."

Why should one individuals or groups beliefs trump someone else's? If the point of Wikipedia is to expose statements to find the largest consistent set (constructively true), then there is no reason to keep information out.

Otherwise, you buy into the notion that some government organization needs to keep congressional scandals out of the news to avoid decreasing citizens faith in perfect government is A-OK.

There's a reason we have a first amendment folks.

What scientific proof is there that this measure did anything useful?

[codynews]

The first amendment doesn't preclude someone with a site from keeping information off of it. It only has to do with the government interfering with you're right to speak.

No ones free speech was violated. If someone wrote a comment on my myspace page and I removed it I don't think there would be any constitutional breech.

Cody

[Gorbag]

@codynews

I agree that the first amendment is a limit to government powers. My comment was an analogy: if we are to trust wikipedia to be a part of the "global brain" metaphor, it needs to be an honest broker, much as we expect that the government does not intrude on the free exchange of ideas in the political space. This is a corruption of that model, reducing the utility of wikipedia drastically to those things espoused by its founder. And who really gives a crap about that?

This is an example of limiting collective intelligence through censorship. We can't act on what we don't know. We should be able to know everything that is known.

[cosuna]

What's the difference between this and censorship. As always depends on the wording. Unfortunately we have been accustomed to compromise if the proper wording is used. We would condemn torture, but not "enhanced interrogation" which both being essentially equal, sans the wording.

In this case, Jimmy was an excellent censor, although he could have used NYT wording "for humanitary purposes". Of course, that same wording could be used by Iranian government to censor out twitter "to avoid bloodshed". Who draws the line?

Tough times ahead for the Internet, caught between today's known paradigm ("politically and judicially correct") and tomorrow's unknown paradigm. Who's gonna win? Of course, tomorrow's thing, but it'll take time.

[codynews]

This is easier than you're making it out to be. wikipedia is a website. The owner of the site was *asked* not to post some info. He made sure it wasn't posted. Good for him. He didn't have to but he did after hearing a good argument.

How you end up slippery sloping that to Iranian government crack downs is amazing.

[0ri0n]

Its a delicate topic, but I am never one to side with a gag order. Censorship can be justified in a myriad of ways, but then it becomes abused under the guise of those same justifications for 'safety' in much the same way the Chinese are doing or Iran regarding its elections now.

The Taliban will kill you regardless of who you are and its only through slivers of truth that trickle into the censored western news that you can actually grasp that. To think you can tip the scales in your favor simply through omission - that, and not 'a pure democracy' as stated earlier, is truly naive.

I am sure there are some looking to break a story like this just for some sick sense of glory, or to rally support for a needed cause, but journalists and paparazzi do it all the time. Is that somehow any more justified?

There are human atrocities happening all the time, and you can't treat a wound while turning a blind eye to it.

Will it ever be said "censorship saved a life today'? Probably not.

[Jim Hubbard]

This is scary as hell! When the media starts selective censoring to save it's own people (or ass) we're all in trouble.

This is the worst breech of journalistic ethics in the history of American journalism.

We need a list of every new organization that agreed to this, so that we know who we can't trust.

We also need more home journalists (bloggers) to get out the story when the mass media fails to.

ABC has turned its programming over to Obama. They gave the White House TOTAL control over the content, guest list, questions, etc. of that healthcare sham. So where does it stop?

We need real reporters. Reporters that do it because freedom and free information and exchanges of ideas are so intimately bound as to be inseparable.

The first thing a facist/dictator does to control the people is control the press. Lucky for Obama, ours is just rolling over and playing dead.

I hope they all crash and burn (financially speaking). We don't need dishonest media.

[shootfirst]

I agree the media should not be able to selectively not report a story when they know it to be true.

Wikipedia is okay, but too many people can make changes to content and thus is open for way too much debate. If I were Taliban now I would run a robot that grabs everything from wikipedia every so often so the lame media can't pull this crap again. Intelligence Agencies grab way more than this and with some simple social engineering you can make other people at the office confirm or deny facts on a person, or use torture to get the real truth. You are not helping anyone by falsifying information that can be gained by other means as they may take it out on the kidnapped individual.

Plus everyone knows not to believe anything on the web or otherwise without fact finding a different way. I think wikipedia even states that in citing sources. You can post whatever you want on the web even wikipedia and it can be total BS till someone catches that it was BS.

[codynews]

THERE WAS NO CENSORSHIP! The only thing that this story is about is the NYT asking wikipedia not to post something.

That's like my mom asking me to post her famous cookie recipe on my blog.

NOTHING was stopping this uppity idiot in Florida from posting this information ANYWHERE ELSE he wanted to. He could have gotten a domain "ThisGuyWasKidnapped.com" if he wanted to get the word out. Or post it on any number of blogs.

[Brigadon]

News Flash, People... Censorship and media Control has been an American institution since the first handbills were distributed by the rebels decrying the Colonial government, and using a few.... artfully invented facts to drum up public fervor where simple truths would not have.

Now, as then, Our job is to fight censorship whenever and wherever possible. The poster in Florida was a hero even if we never know his name.

Military censorship (concealing troop maneuvers, etc.) is one thing... but tactical and civilian information should never be kept secret... It's not a matter of the 'public's right to know', it's more a matter of 'what is the government doing that it's citizens are not allowed to do'. The very foundation of Tyranny. Just because the 'government' in question is a corporate news establishment instead of a regional government does not make it any less of an attempt at tyranny.

[freemarket--2008]

Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say if you cannot distinguish between a private and public entity?

[larsinii]

And you are a jackass even if we never know your name...Codynews is just wasting his time arguing and trying to explain something any rational human being should already know and understand to these fools.And by the way Brigadon, you're one of those fools.

[B-Ri]

How does this add up to censorship in any way? One company asked another company to keep certain information secret. This happens all the time, this case happened to have someone's life on the line though. Hasn't anyone here ever seen the first Die Hard movie? Mclane's family is outed on TV by a reporter for a story, the results could have been catastrophic. Sometimes it's necesary to keep things quiet. If it is just for some type of personal gain then fine get up in arms about it but otherwise let it go.