Wikipedia is a marvel of Web innovation and utility, but recent controversies raise a troubling question: Just how accurate is Wikipedia, and can you trust what it tells you? College professors say not very and you can’t.

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/searc...om/id/17740041/

The word on Wikipedia: Trust but verify
MSNBC - 2 hours ago
By Lisa Daniels and Alex Johnson. “I was looking at a stack of final examinations,” said Waters, a professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College in ...

How funny.

This MSNBC report on Wikipedia contains a factual error in the "Weighing Wikipedia" inset graphic, when you click "Microsoft Corp." as the topic of interest.

It states:
Gregory Kohs, a technology blogger, revealed in February 2007 that Microsoft Corp. offered to pay him to "fix" technical articles on Wikipedia.

I am not a technology blogger, and Microsoft has never offered me any money. The report is actually referencing Rick Jelliffe, and the Microsoft "incident" was revealed in January, not February.

(The confusion probably arises from the fact that I founded Wikipedia Review, which is a company that authored many neutral, factual articles suitable for Wikipedia, in exchange for payment. Wikipedia Review continues to evangelize corporate use of wiki spaces, but no longer promotes or endorses editing for payment in such an unreliable domain as Wikipedia.)

I told NBC that when they print the retraction, they may simply indicate that "Gregory Kohs is a wiki specialist who is co-developing Centiare.com."

I hope I see a correction (free advertising for Centiare). In case they correct it before you actually get a chance to look at it, I took a screen capture for posterity.

Greg

What do you expect from a news org that has rock stars working as reporters?

Jonny

It's after 1:00 PM Eastern, the next day, and I am still the Microsoft blogger.

Greg

The word on Wikipedia: Trust but verify
MSNBC - 20 hours ago
By Lisa Daniels and Alex Johnson. “I was looking at a stack of final examinations,” said Waters, a professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College in ...

We're coming up on six full days that this nonsense has been ignored by MSNBC.com. I have sent two e-mails to NBC Nightly News, two e-mails to MSNBC reporter Alex Johnson, and now I've called MSNBC.com in Redmond, Washington at 425-703-6397. I have not gotten a single response, and the erroneous text is still proudly displayed on their website, ironically on a story entitled "The word on Wikipedia: Trust but verify -- Popular online encyclopedia, plagued by errors, troubles educators".

The MSNBC.com telephone voice-prompted system is a complete joke:

1) When I press the number for help with MSNBC.com (at 2:45 PM ET on a Wednesday afternoon), nobody is available to help me at this time. Leave a message.

2) When I try the "Public Relations" selection, that ports me to a voicemail box that is full and cannot accept messages. When I hit the button to be taken to an operator, it tries to connect, then disconnects me.

3) When I try the "Marketing and Advertising" selection, just in case I want to pay for a $100,000 ad campaign on their site, I find that "this extension is no longer in service. Goodbye."

This is worthy of a news article or at least a blog post in itself, don't you think?

Greg

Sure, why not?

Still, as far as getting them to actually make the correction, maybe we should try snail mail. They've got a general-purpose address, which I can't help noticing is a Microsoft destination, not an NBC destination:

MSNBC on the Internet
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052

So few people send or receive actual letters these days, that might at least have a chance of working...