The Dangers of Open Content

gihan_ripper writes "Recently released open movie Elephants Dream found itself in hot water with Catalonians after accidentally using an offensive word instead of 'Català' in the subtitle menu. The cause? Designer Matt Ebb had used Wikipedia to look up the Catalan word for Catalan on a day when the entry had been vandalized. He writes about this experience on the Elephant Dream blog. We may have scoffed at John Seigenthaler over his criticisms of Wikipedia, but it gives us pause for thought when we to heavily on Wikipedia."

All this really does

[also-rr]

is show the importance of checking multiple sources, especially when you are relying on it for something important! However, I believe that Wikipedia is already looking at a stable version, in which a stable and unstable branch of the project are maintained with the unstable changes merged in reguarly. This would remove problems like this one, for the most part anyway.

Re:Is Wikipedia really wrong on this?

[Ghiblian]

From reading the summary of the article, it appears "català" is the correct term. You misread the statement, which says "using an offensive word instead of 'Català'." I don't know if the article actually references the "offensive word" since MirrorDot appears to have cached the page while it was down...

Fact-checking and Wikipedia

[spiffyman]

Frankly, Mr. Ebb should have known better. As a copy editor at what may be the most prestigious college paper [dailytexanonline.com] in the U.S., I can attest to Wikipedia's occasional (though not pervasive) errors. Because of these, I have a standing policy of referring to Wikipedia only for corroboration, not confirmation. Anyone who fact-checks - for a living or otherwise - should already have in mind things like source bias, credibility, etc.

Re:Is Wikipedia really wrong on this?

[9x320]

Oh, now I see! Darn old Slashdot linked to the wrong revision! Maybe they meant this one [wikipedia.org] where they used the word "Polaco" everywhere? It took eleven hours for it to be fixed in this [wikipedia.org] revision. I guess all the Wikipedians with this article on their watchlists were asleep at the wheel?

Re:Dangers of international content?

[fotbr]

When working on your car, all you need is your Chilton's

You don't want to know how many times I've needed to do something that WASN'T in a Chiltons. Substitute "Factory Service Manual" for "Chiltons" and I'll agree.

Scoff at Seigenthaler?

[Wordsmith]

Why scoff at Seigenthaler? I met the man a few months ago, and we discussed his history with Wikipedia. He was very level-headed and reasonable about the whole thing. He acknowledged it's an interesting social experiment, but was very worried for what it can do to the reputations of good people if taken seriously as an information source.

It's worth noting that Seigenthaler DID eventually track down the malicious poster. Seigenthaler's an adamant free-speech advocate (and a head-honcho muckety-muck at the First Amendment Center), with an extreme distaste for libel and slander laws - he'd rather see lies and mischaracterizations flushed out through the marketplace of ideas. So he didn't sue, but he did go on TV and demand an apology from the malicious poster. That seems like a reasonable thing to me; the poster embarrassed Seigenthaler through his lies, and Seigenthaler embarrassed the poster through a demand for truth.

Seigenthaler also told me that when the poster's boss threatened to fire the poster, Seigenthaler called and asked the boss not to; he said the matter was settled was the truth was on the record.

He said the incident pushed and strained his belief in the marketplace of ideas, and that he was awfully tempted to go ahead with a libel suit. I'm glad ultimately he stayed true to his core values.