The trouble with Wikipedia (again)
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You'd think the best authority on a book's inspiration would be its author. At least that's what Philip Roth thought. As Andrew Lih recounts in Online Journalism Review, Roth wrote in the New Yorker about his struggle to fix an incorrect Wikipedia passage about his book, The Human Stain: "That someone's first-hand knowledge about their own work could be rejected in this manner seems inane. But it's a fundamental working process of Wikipedia."
RE: The trouble with Wikipedia (again)
Written by Carl Zimmer on Sep 20, 2012 Blog
Actually, I think that this is an example of really poor journalism, not the evils of Wikipedia. Roth (or his servant-like biographer) didn't bother to learn the basic rules for how to request changes to Wikipedia pages. And their complaints actually had no basis when you look at them carefully. Just about no journalist covering the affair bothered to look into the facts. They simply took Roth's claims as truth. Which, given the situation, is quite ironic.
This blog post from a Wikipedia editor clears up the matter nicely: http://quominus.org/archives/979
RE: The trouble with Wikipedia (again)
Written by Steven B Krivit on Sep 20, 2012
Wikipedia is a fundamentally flawed source for any topic that is outside the most commonplace, simple subject matter. The reason is that Wikipedia forbids original reporting. It therefore requires its editors to copy text and ideas from secondary sources. In order to avoid the appearance of plagiarism, its "editors" must therefore reword the information they obtain from expert, original sources. Ethical issues aside, this often results in a loss of accuracy and distorts facts and meaning.
S.B. Krivit
RE: The trouble with Wikipedia (again)
Written by Robin Meadows on Sep 20, 2012 Blog
Wow, Carl, thanks for posting Wikipedia's response. I thought the New Yorker was supposed to be great at fact-checking?