Here's the story. Or at least most of it.
Some 19 years ago, a man in Germany, together with his half brother, reportedly murdered an actor named Walter Sedlmayr. The man was convicted and served 15 years in jail.
Now he is free. And, according to Wired, he has exercised that freedom by instructing lawyers, the elegantly named firm of Stopp and Stopp, to sue Wikipedia.
The lawsuit claims that German privacy law, designed to help criminals re-integrate into society, prevents the man being named in association with Walter Sedlmayr's murder.
Wired quotes Jennifer Granick from the Electronic Frontier Foundation as saying that the lawyers are not only demanding that publications change whatever they write now, but that online archives must endure revision, too.
In writing to Wikipedia, the lawyers offered a very interesting approach: "As your article deals with a local German public figure (such as the actor Walter Sedlmayr), we expect you are aware that you have to comply with applicable German law."
Well, gosh, perhaps not everyone realizes when they mention, say, Boris Becker or that interesting actress who was in the first of the Bourne movies, that one is subject to German law when one does so.
Geek.com quotes the Electronic Frontier Foundation as adding: "At stake is the integrity of history itself. If all publications have to abide by the censorship laws of any and every jurisdiction just because they are accessible over the global Internet, then we will not be able to believe what we read, whether about Falun Gong (censored by China), the Thai king (censored under lèse majesté) or German murders."
(Credit:
CC Schoschie/Flickr)
You might be wondering why I have not mentioned this German murderer's name. You see, as I write, I am reminded that the world seems to revel in the persona of murderers. In some slightly twisted way, they become figures of fascination.
I have a strange suspicion that the more the name of Walter Sedlmayr's murderer is mentioned, the more famous he will become. And the more famous he will become, the more money he might be able to make from the fame he claims not to desire.
So I am conducting a fame-reduction experiment. Moreover, I know that everyone who chooses to discover his name can do so in a myriad of ways.
I wonder how many people tried to access information about this man who murdered the German actor Walter Sedlmayr and how many people have done so in recent days.
I also wonder how Wikipedia will choose to respond to this interesting and rather revisionist-minded lawsuit. At the time of writing, the full names of both murderers are still there in the Wikipedia entry for Walter Sedlmayr.
However, the Wikipedia Administrators' noticeboard has a spirited discussion about all aspects of the case.
The solution proposed by a poster called Zara 1709 on the noticeboard is to "remove the full name from the article and the article talk page, but leave in the edit history of the article and the talk page. We would even have some sources that mention the full names in the reference, simply because they provide other, relevant information, too."
The precedent for this is the so-called Star Wars kid case, in which a 14-year-old Canadian boy waved around a golf-ball retriever like a lightsaber and then endured painful taunts, leading to an equally painful lawsuit.
Zara1709 noted that: "It is quite important to point out that, on Wikipedia, regard for people's privacy applies to criminals and former criminals, too."
However, another poster, Baseball Bugs, dissented: "There is no justification whatsoever for censoring the names of the killers. The notability argument is bogus, there is no privacy or BLP issue, and the 'doing harm' argument is crystal-ball and thus is irrelevant. And some anonymous German judge has no jurisdiction over Wikipedia."
In reading all this, I am left with the words that were often drubbed into me by teachers: "History is written by the winners."
So if this German request succeeds, might some consider that the winner is Wolfgang Wehrle, the man who, with his half brother Manfred Lauber, murdered Walter Sedlmayr 19 years ago? Dash it, I couldn't help myself. I hope I'm not causing undue work for some future editor.
Oh, Wikipedia. Have you really become just another political organization?
I only ask because some clever people with nothing better to do have dedicated their bright gray matter to poring through Wikipedia's pages and drawing conclusions. The members of the Augmented Cognition Research Group at the Palo Alto Research Center could probably solve health care over a nonfat latte and a blueberry scone. Instead, they have examined who makes edits on Wikipedia and whose edits are reversed.
It makes for the same kind of dispiriting reading that you might once have expected from a Politburo travel brochure. You see, it appears that a hierarchy has emerged at Wiki Central, one that seems to have a significant influence in what is published and, indeed, what is removed.
These days, there are between 650,000 and 810,00 active editors of the world's most beloved unofficial encyclopedia, figures that suggest Wikipedia activity has plateaued rather than grown. And this has been accompanied by a jostling for authority that reminds one only of, well, Congress. You know, the place where senior senators seem to be able to get away with, well, I was going to say "murder," but that would be inappropriate until proven.
The researchers seem convinced that editors who make more than 100 edits per month are less likely to have their entries reversed than those who contribute fewer. The group that contributes more than 1,000 edits per month (when was the last time these people saw the sky?) are enthusiastic about acting as the factual bible-writers of our time, to say the least. Between 2005 and 2008, their average number of edits has increased from 1,740 to 2,095.
The boys from Palo Alto seem to believe that those in the editing oligarchy rarely have their contributions deleted, or reverted, as seems to be the parlance. However, those who occasionally take a step away from their normal lives to make an entry are far more likely to have their contributions incised.
The researchers, led by Ed H. Chi, concluded: "We consider this as evidence of growing resistance from the Wikipedia community to new content, especially when the edits come from occasional editors."
It seems, from the Palo Altans' brightly colored graphs, that elite editors only have their work questioned 1 percent of the time, whereas occasional editors can now expect a 15 percent deletion rate.
Oh, Lordy. It's just like the Senate, isn't it? The bigwigs know best, control the most important committees, and generally swan around in limos with the finest companions of the day and night. All the while, the junior senators toil for influence, beg for their voices to be heard, and dream of becoming senior senators.
The Guardian newspaper offered this plaintive quote from a frustrated junior editor, Aaron Schwarz: "There's no place on Wikipedia that says: 'Want to become a Wikipedia editor? Here's how you do it.' Instead, you basically have to really become part of that community and pick it up through osmosis and have the tradition passed down to you."
Oh, why can't people find a more beautiful way to organize themselves? This is the only knowledge our children will ever have. I mean, we don't really expect any of them to read books on a Kindle, do we?
I believe the world doesn't give us enough to believe in.
So we should look to any possible source of guidance to help us through the messy morass of life.
If Wikipedia does it for you, lovely. If the Church of Scientology is your preference, lovely too.
But it seems these two sources are in something of a credibility saber fight, one in which Wikipedia has dealt the church a wounding swipe.
In a decision that will concern some in Los Angeles, the online encyclopedia has decided to ban all changes to the site made by IP addresses owned or operated by the church and its associates.
According to a report by the Register, the arbitration against the church, the longest in Wikipedia's history, ended this week with a 10-0 decision, one Wikipedian abstaining.
The decision shows that Wikipedia's arbitrators were anything but arbitrary. They noted around 430 articles concerning the Church of Scientology and described "persistent point-of-view pushing and extensive feuding over sources on multiple articles."
They said that the very topic of Scientology "has become a magnet for single purpose accounts, and sockpuppetry is rife." (Single purpose accounts are those that only contribute on one sole topic. Sockpuppetry is, oh, you can work that one out.)
The least reliable, or perhaps least neutral, entries appear to have been biographies of living people in which pro- and anti-Scientologists tried to force their own mirror on the innocent reader.
I don't know about you, but whenever I am approached by Scientologists on the street, asking to take my blood pressure, asking the time, or asking if I'd like to fly up to Planet Excitement in a rather fine rocket, I marvel at their conviction.
However, Wikipedia demands a little faith too, so one has to admire that it is trying to keep its vast Church of Knowledge in order before someone knocks over a pew or two.
Still, it would be heartening if the two parties could find some sense of accommodation in the long run. There are many who would really like to discover an objective truth or two about Scientology.
So perhaps Wikipedia could ask some Scientologists to edit a few entries about Hollywood. You just know they must have some rather fun information they could share on certain biographies of living artists.
And perhaps, in a return gesture of goodwill, John Travolta could play Jimmy Wales in a biopic.
If any of you have ever studied sociology, you'll know that it largely consists of making stuff up about society and pretending that you've discovered an astonishing truth.
This might be at least the acorn for an oak of explanation as to why an Irish sociology student named Shane Fitzgerald decided to make up a quote and slip it into a Wikipedia entry.
Fitzgerald chose the Wikipedia entry of recently deceased French composer Maurice Jarre, who wrote the music for films such as "Doctor Zhivago," "Dead Poets Society," and "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo."
He inserted his poetry into the dead man's mouth, only to see Wikipedia's incisive editors excise it.
He tried again. Within 6 minutes, Wikipedia's editors flicked it off as if it were a defecating fly. However, the third time he tried, the editors were, perhaps, drinking a little herbal tea or copulating in a virtual broom cupboard, because the quote stayed up for 25 hours.
This was enough time for the Guardian, the Independent, and many other newspapers and blogs to insert it in their obituaries of Jarre.
Fitzgerald is not without guile. He made sure that his quotes were just intelligent enough not to be jarring. One read: "My life has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life."
This lyrical masterpiece was followed by: "Music is how I will be remembered. When I die, there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear."
Of course, this would all have sounded even better in the native French. But what is truly disheartening is Fitzgerald's explanation for his descent into Wikidness.
He told the Guardian: "My aim was to show that an undergraduate university student in Ireland can influence what newspapers are doing around the world and also that the reliance of newspapers on the Internet can lead to some faults."
I fear that he will not go far.
If only he had said: "Look, newspapers are dying out there. They're not making any money. They're closing their doors. They're firing their staff. Journalists have even stopped drinking because they can't afford it. So they're turning to bloody Wikipedia for their quotes."
That way, he may have received the instant attention of Rupert Murdoch and perhaps several other forward-thinking media moguls. Instead, he went with the following argument (more or less). "I'm just a bloke from Ireland, and I was just saying how the Internet isn't perfect."
How sad. Especially as he never used his 'work' in the sociology project for which it was allegedly intended.
In honor of Mr. Fitzgerald, I have slipped a couple of inaccuracies into this post. One just might be in describing Maurice Jarre's finest works. And the other? Well, I won't pony that one up.
The British are looking very hard in the mirror these days. Perhaps it is related to the belief that the country is running out of money.
In any case, who would have thought that they would choose to give up mandatory education about the Second World War and begin teaching their children about Twitter and Wikipedia?
The plans, leaked to the dastardly press (perhaps some devious cove just twittered a tiny URL to a password-protected site), give children relief from having to learn too many dates, place names, and pesky scientific formulas. You can google all that nonsense, anyway.
But if you can't tweet your progress in toilet training, what kind of adult can you expect to become?
The plans declare that children must leave primary school (to which children go until the unofficial drinking age of 11) fully conversant with the delights of blogging, podcasting, Wikipedia, and Twitter.
While I am aghast that Facebook appears not to be specifically mentioned, my eyes become moist when I see that children will be required to gain "fluency" in keyboard skills and learn to use a spellchecker.
Naturally, talking--and, presumably, typing--heads have already offered their 60 pence worth on the topic. Teresa Cremin, president of the U.K. Literary Association, worries about a lack of drama and "no emphasis on reading for pleasure."
Madam, please don't worry. We all read Twitter for pleasure. Can there be any other reason?
Other British critics seem to be worried that Twitter and Wikipedia are merely fads. But ladies and gentlemen, you are the great nation that brought us lasting pleasures such as "Dancing with the Stars," "American Idol," and the Dyson vacuum cleaner thingy. Things that the whole world marvels at and studies every day.
The creators of Twitter and Wikipedia can only hope to match the enduring quality of some of the great British contributions to history, science, and culture.
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