Re: Wikipedia?

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Alas, Greg, lawsuits, not to mention death threats, are part of 
the reference publishing game.  Some members on this list may 
have experience with the attempts (long in the past, I am told) 
by the Church of Scientology to browbeat publishers (including 
Britannica) about certain articles, with the threat of litigation 
always looming. Or there was the group threatening 
Merriam-Webster with a boycott for the inclusion of the word 
"niggardly" in the dictionary, which was thought to be a racial 
epithet.  That is nothing compared to the trademark group that 
threatened to tear Merriam down for printing those words in 
common use that some believed were protected marks.  We should 
not leave out Britannica's map of Kashmir.  Pakistan or India? 
Answer wrong and your books will be embargoed by the customs 
department.  Or have we all forgotten the firestorm surrounding 
MIT Press a few years ago upon the publication of a book dealing 
with rape?

It's an unwelcome fact of life that publishing good books and 
publishing them well is occasionally an act of heroism (not 
unlike the situation of those librarians who, for example, 
protect Harry Potter from the enemies of "witchcraft").

Joe Esposito

On 2/23/07, Greg Tananbaum <gtananbaum@gmail.com> wrote:
> A fundamental difference between Wikipedia and, say, the
> Encyclopedia Britannica is the level of gatekeeping that exists.
> I am not aware (though, of course, that does not mean there is
> not precedent) of a subject suing a "real" encyclopedia for an
> entry that is unflattering at best and libelous at worst (see
> below).
>
> Of course, would Fuzzy Zoeller have an entry in Britannica?
>
> Best, Greg
>
> ________________________
>   Greg Tananbaum
> gtananbaum@gmail.com
> (510) 295-7504
>
>
> http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197008201
>
> Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller filed an anonymous lawsuit against a
> Miami law firm for allegedly defamatory edits to his
> Wikipedia<http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=Wikipedia&x=&y=>page,
> hoping to prevent further injury to his reputation and to protect
> his family's privacy.
>
> But Zoeller was quickly unmasked as the "John Doe" plaintiff by 
> online news site The Smoking 
> Gun<http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0222071fuzzy1.html>, 
> which used a search 
> engine<http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197006843>to 
> find the source of the allegedly defamatory material cited in 
> Zoeller's legal filing.
>
> The lawsuit claims edits to Zoeller's Wikipedia profile last 
> December came from a computer 
> <http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=computer&x=&y=> 
> with an IP 
> <http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=IP&x=&y=> 
> address registered by Miami-based law firm Josef Silny & 
> Associates.
>
> The altered profile <http://www.answers.com/topic/fuzzy-zoeller>,
> which Zoeller claims is false and libelous, remains online at
> Answers.com. The Zoeller entry at Wikipedia appears to have been
> purged of the objectionable passages.