Defending Wikipedia from shysters

[cheeni]

It appears there is a class-action lawsuit being filed against Wikipedia by a bunch of scammers. The law suit looks to ride on the coat tails of the recent Seigenthaler episode, which sort of ended in an anti-climax with the anonymous John Doe offendor, either owning up or being traced, depending on who you ask.

I profit from the Wikipedia's existence. More often than not, it proves reliable. In fact, I can't really say I have ever been misled by the Wikipedia, whenever I've seen a factual error it has been fairly easy to spot the NPOV angle.

What is with the mollycoddling of the masses? Wearing my tin-foil hat, it seems easy to get carried away about the real reason behind all of this. From some of the facts, it does appear to be a case of the wolf taking cover behind the sheep. Wikipedia is a powerful and influential source of news that cannot be censored - not a happy thought for the powerful, who merely view Wikipedia as a disruptive tool that challenges their status quo.

The Internet was a celebration of freedom, a tribute to the geek. This appears to be lesser and lesser the case. Bah!

Comments

[thaths.livejournal.com]

What is with the mollycoddling of the masses?.

Mollycoddling has nothing to do with it, my friend. It is the best and brightest of US-ian free enterprise at work. It is a make-money-quick scheme that is a love-child of a menage a troia beween Smith, Hobbes and Rand.

This is not about power. The powerful already control most content publishing avenues and Wikipedia is nowhere close to overthrowing the powerful people's hegemony. No. This is about greed. The shysters aim to incite the greed among the masses and take the vast majorty of any class action settlement that happen to come out of it.

[ravi.livejournal.com]

dude, happy birthday! will call your cell later today! :)