This blog post, as with all the others I write, is written in my personal capacity as a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and not in my role with the Wikimedia Foundation. Why I’m making this statement explicitly for a change should become readily apparent if you read past the first few lines.
For anyone who has been living under a rock/does not read the New Yorker/is not involved in the Wikimedia movement, a brief recap: the author Philip Roth is having a spat with Wikipedia over its coverage of his book The Human Stain, specifically who the article claims inspired the character Coleman Silk. In Roth’s own words:
Dear Wikipedia,
I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.
Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”
Thus was created the occasion for this open letter. After failing to get a change made through the usual channels, I don’t know how else to proceed.
Roth then goes on to explain that while our article claimed Anatole Broyard was the inspiration, the inspiration was in fact Melvin Tumin.
Said “open letter” was published in the New Yorker, thus enabling Roth to provide a secondary source and also give Wikipedia a big “fuck you” for not just taking him on his word. And, since the open letter was published, the content has been changed, and the intertubes have chosen it as an opportunity to examine and critique how Wikipedia approaches the problem of sourcing and commentary by people associated with an article’s subject. Organisations, sites and newspapers providing coverage include The Guardian, ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, and (most recently from a “what Oliver has read” perspective) Andrew Lih, a writer, academic and journalist with extensive experience dealing with Wikipedia from inside the tent – and a man I respect tremendously. It is Lih’s coverage that finally broke this camel’s back, because like a lot of the other discussion he took Roth’s explanation as the truth and launched into a lengthy discussion of how we handle primary sourcing.
There’s only one problem with this: Roth’s open letter is at best the (justifiably) aggrieved and confused ramblings of a man ignorantly discussing what he does not understand or remember, and at worst a deliberately malicious act inspired by nothing more than a misguided desire to flip us the Vs and maybe get paid by the New Yorker on the way.
Lets go through his account again, shall we?
I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed.
False. There was absolutely no misstatement in the article. What the article claimed at the time he wrote this open letter was that “Kakutani and other critics were struck by the parallels to the life of Anatole Broyard, a writer and the New York Times literary critic in the 1950s and 1960s who was of Louisiana Creole mixed-race descent and passed for white”.
This is entirely correct. Kakutani was struck by the parallels, and has stated this, as have Brent Staples in the New York Times and several other literary reviewers and authors. The “misstatement” was in fact “reviewers had said something that he considered incorrect, and Wikipedia had repeated this”. Not only is this not Wikipedia’s fault, it isn’t even a “misstatement”. We are reporting what critics have said, and identifying it as the statement of critics rather than the truth. Those critics are not claiming that Broyard was the person who inspired the character, merely that there are parallels between Broyard and the character, and our article reflects this.
It would be a “misstatement” for us to say “the character was influenced by Broyard”. It would be a “misstatement” for us to bluntly say “there are parallels between Broyard and this character”, without making clear that we are not the ones drawing that conclusion. But we did not make the first claim, and we attributed the second. Roth either didn’t actually read the article, or did but thinks that There Is No Truth But That Of Philip Roth.
Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others,
False. Petitioned is such a nice word, isn’t it? Certainly nicer than “I instructed my biographer to remove a claim that was not in and of itself false, something he persisted in doing even after an editor had explicitly asked my biographer to verify that and undone my biographer’s edit, and then I complained that Wikipedia had not been willing to believe that a pair of anonymous IP addresses were my official biographer, even though said anonymous IPs directly stated that they were”.
Presumably Philip Roth would be perfectly fine with me claiming to be the Easter Bunny.
my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”
False. Nobody ever claimed Roth was not a “credible” source. As the quotes demonstrate, the administrator in question accepted Roth’s claim that he was an authority on his own works, but demanded secondary sources. If Roth is incapable of distinguishing between credible/non-credible and primary/secondary, this is his problem to work through and his editor’s excuse to ask for a substantial pay raise. And a whisky.
Thus was created the occasion for this open letter. After failing to get a change made through the usual channels, I don’t know how else to proceed.
False, on two fronts. The first is “the usual channels” – you see, Roth did not email the Open-source Ticket Requests System (OTRS), the traditional channel for people taking issues with their articles, and one that is easily findable from the contact us page that readers are linked to every time they open any wikipedia page ever. According to some of my fellow sysops, he emailed our account unblocking software. Quite how he found it, I don’t know, but “usual channels” it is not.
Second, and most crucially – this was not his only way of proceeding. He did not have to write an open letter in the New Yorker. Sure, it makes for a good story – Roth is told by an administrator that he needs a secondary source, so he writes one to fling it back at us – but it isn’t the truth. Because Roth had already stated in an interview that Broyard had no link to the character.
And the Wikipedia article already included this statement, along with a link to the accompanying secondary source.
Now. I don’t know if Philip Roth is (a) unable to remember his own statements to the press, correctly characterise or describe the actions of him and his agents, read things he’s critiquing and understand the distinction between credibility and categorisation of sources or (b) simply trying to cause a fuss and maybe have the New Yorker bung him a few quid in exchange for acting like a whiny, sanctimonious child incapable of understanding why we’d obliterate coverage of his work’s literary criticism because The Author Says So.
What I do know is the following:
First, this is not a fundamental flaw in Wikipedia’s central precepts – this is one author and his agents being unable to navigate the internet and/or report the truth with any degree of accuracy. This is our attempt to make our information not only accurate, but verifiable – to ensure that readers have a hope in hell of actually checking the accuracy of our information. This is not achieved by enabling subjects to become the oracles of truth for any article that mentions them, or telling readers “we know it’s accurate because Philip Roth said so, and you’ll just have to trust us on that”. We don’t want readers to trust us. We want readers to think and be able to do their own research.
Second, maybe (although I doubt it) we need to have a frank debate over how we handle primary and secondary sourcing. But for all of the reasons explained above, Philip Roth and the Editorial of Azkaban is a terrible poster boy for such a debate.
Third: people should perhaps start having a debate about the way authors are treated in “proper” sources. The New Yorker, the Guardian, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times – all respected bodies. And all, without being able and/or willing to do their own research, happily published or republished Roth’s assertions. We rely on these organisations for reporting what our politicians do, what our armed forces do, how entities with the power of life and death over humanity are accountable to the people. And they happily gulp down the glorified press releases of anyone who offers to let them touch his Pulitzer.
And you think Wikipedia is what we should be concerned about? Fuck. That. Noise.
*drops mic*
It isn’t the first time (and won’t be the last) that someone unknowingly engages in borderline astroturfing and censorship, then pins the blame on Wikipedia. Being openly editable gives the subjects Wikipedia covers a sense of entitlement they don’t have when dealing with traditional press.
On the other hand, in my opinion, blaming Mr. Roth exclusively is overly simplistic. It is not Roth’s responsibility to understand Wikipedia – that’s what he hires a PR agent for. Wikipedia’s proper channels are not always consistent or easy to find.
Roth should have more patience and respect for Wikipedia’s autonomy. His PR agent should accept responsibility for understanding Wikipedia’s proper channels and basic rules. Wikipedia can make an effort to improve its collaboration with the subjects it covers.
-David King, EthicalWiki
I think this post cuts to the heart of why the Philip Roth media reporting is screwed up, because it trusts Philip Roth’s account, but that account just doesn’t fact check. The Signpost was the only outlet I saw even mention the text that was under dispute:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-09-10/In_the_media
I think there is a very worthwhile discussion to have regarding errors of fact that are not fixed quickly enough, even when we are alerted to the problem. Hundreds of such incidents have occurred. This is not one of them. I think there is a worthwhile discussion to have regarding how primary sources by the author of a work of fiction should be weighed against claims by secondary sources, and what should be included of excluded, which gets into interesting philosophical issues like Barthes’ Death of the Author. But that isn’t what the news articles were about either. They pretty much dropped the ball on this one.
“It is not Roth’s responsibility to understand Wikipedia – that’s what he hires a PR agent for. Wikipedia’s proper channels are not always consistent or easy to find. “
No, on both counts.
If there was a genuine biographer, and he implied any competence at all in PR to Mr Roth, I suggest Mr Roth fires him and recovers any fees paid.
The only interaction on the wiki was that some anonymous person popped along to Wikipedia, with no evidence whatsoever whether they were a biographer, a Nobel Prizewinner, or a PR spin agent, and claimed on zero evidence, “I AM SOMEONE’S BIOGRAPHER SO YOU HAVE TO GET RID OF THIS FALSE STATEMENT”. Unfortunately the statement (as the blog says) the statement wasn’t false. Unfortunately the big “contact us” link that anyone looks for on any site to report a problem, wasn’t clicked.
Rule 178 of the internet says something like this:
When someone posts changes onto Wikipedia saying I AM S BIOGRAPHER AND I DEMAND YOU CHANGE THIS PAGE (as happened here) but doesn’t show a reliable source for what they want, requiring reputable sources beforehand will almost always lead to more accurate Wikipedia content.
Wikipedia is a reference work, so in case of doubt, it aims to state only what public persons could in theory verify is stated by reliable sources. Wikipedia’s biographical policies have clear rules that sourcing should be of highest standards, and that unsourced (or even poorly sourced statements) can be removed very quickly on request. Opening the door to unsourced statements “because someone unproven says so” will do FAR more harm than good. For every Roth with a valid point (fixed now) a thousand egos would love a relaxation of the rules and a means to introduce bias at any cost. There is scope to consider how to better meet cases like this, but the vast majority of the time this policy is exactly what does produce better quality to the public. Because of our “no exceptions” requirements that all facts be capable of verification, Wikipedia’s articles in many fields are better quality – not just equal – to many other sources, and at times of professional quality.
Wikipedia, of course, has an article with sources on this. But you don’t need the link, because actually I’M WIKIPEDIA’S OFFICIAL STATISTICAL ANALYST, so my word’s all you need.
*rises from chair, starts applause*
*joins applause*
*Joins applause!*
*joins applause*
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I think I can safely say, on the basis of this article, that Philip Roth is a proper twat
This is all very well. There is one thing that should be stated clearly, however.
The Human Stain the dullest book I have ever had the misfortune to read and if this debate encourages even one more unfortunate person to pick up a copy it will be a sad day indeed.
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Wikipedia deems The New Yorker, the Guardian, ABC News, and the Los Angeles Times to be “reliable sources” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#What_counts_as_a_reliable_source); so Wikipedia deems organizations that “happily gulp down the glorified press releases of anyone who offers to let them touch his Pulitzer” to be “reliable sources”.
Indeed; it’s a problem. Our model was based on the idea that news organisations would be required to do proper fact-checking…which was possibly true, but is more questionable these days (partly *because* of Wikipedia’s existence).
What have you seen which gave you the idea that Wikipedia’s model “was based on the idea that news organisations would be required to do proper fact-checking”?
The Wikipedia I know is modelled rather on the “common sense” of the administrators. If you’d gone to Wikipedia last week using an anonymous (non-administrator) account and suggested that the New Yorker was not a reliable source, some Wikipedia administrator would have blocked your IP address before you ever had the chance to argue about the New Yorker’s fact-checking policies and practices; and if you’d appealed to the Arbitration Committee, they would have simply accused you of trolling and extended the block. That’s the real Wikipedia model.
What Wikipedia counts as reliable is based on the question: “reliable for what”.
The NYT is deemed a reliable source for Wikipedia sourcing not because it’s always right, but because a reader can usually be sure some care and checking went into it. The statements on it have some value as evidence to a reader checking up on what we say. If NYT says Madoff was sentenced to 150 years or Standard Chartered paid a fine to NY of $340m, then Madoff probably was sentenced, and probably to 150 years, and SC probably did pay a fine of that sum, though other sources may give more detail or nuances.
But – Mr Roth’s own website is also a reliable source, so are twitter posts of Kevin Smith, Mandy Stadtmiller and Imogen Heap for statements of their respective owners. Why are these “verifiable”? Again, same reason. Because a reader has a good basis to believe a page on Mr Roth’s website or Kevin Smith’s twitter feed will only be there upon that person’s approval and as that person’s expressed view or statement. (As opposed to a post on my blog in which I say “Mr Roth wrote this, take my word on it”: there isn’t any special reason to believe this. All one can say there is I stated that Mr Roth stated it, which isn’t the same at all)
That is what we, on behalf of our readers, look for and anyone can do it. Across Wikipedia, company websites, twitter and blog posts, personal websites, all get used as sources *for statements of their owners*. Had Mr Roth bothered to click “contact us” he’d have known.
Let’s quickly demolish your other point. There’s no guarantees, but it’s been tested and usually the case. If you’d gone to Wikipedia as an IP editor “and suggested that the New Yorker was not a reliable source”, and you had done so reasonably, constructively and with fair concerns, in order to try and help WIkipedia be better, and not acting like an ‘one tune is all I know’ argumentative jerk then you’d probably get a good answer and discussion. But if you come over as incapable of understanding what it’s about, wanting to get your biased point in Wikipedia via any tenuous legalisms or tendentiousness, and it gets clear you don’t have much to contribute, then you’ll probably get one chance to do better and then people will give up on you. A bit like going into a store and asking for help, or shouting and ranting like a dick. One gets a manager, the other gets the exit. Normal social skills #101, they apply on the internet too.
You say:
If you’d gone to Wikipedia as an IP editor “and suggested that the New Yorker was not a reliable source”, and you had done so reasonably, constructively and with fair concerns, in order to try and help WIkipedia be better… then you’d probably get a good answer and discussion.
No, not really. You’d probably be blocked and then referred to an Arbitration Committee which operates in secret and would summarily uphold the block, without ever considering for a second whether or not you’d acted “reasonably, constructively and with fair concerns, in order to try and help Wikipedia be better”.
Anyway, there is no evidence that Wikipedia’s model is “based on the idea that news organisations would be required to do proper fact-checking”. That might have been someone’s unofficial ideal at some point, but it never made it into the working model.
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That third point about the newspapers is by far the most important. They have badly misinformed the public a number of times on very important issues in the name of balance. When there is only one set of facts then any balance becomes false balance. The earth orbits the sun. Reporting that some PhDs think the earth is stationary is false balance and misleads.
The media has done this on political issues (reasons for war in Iraq), science issues (climate change, stem cell research), and social issues (abortion, vaccines). The print media has failed mightily and they are falling into deserved obscurity. There is finally realisation they’ve been suckered by the false balance angle into believing their own writings, and they know they have a responsibility to their readers. That is good news but perhaps it is too little too late.
I realise of course that the fuss is entirely Roth’s fault for failing to read up properly on Wikipedia’s policy and procedures, and writing about them only from the perspective of a grumpy old man who found it difficult to make the improvement he wanted to an article which he thought he was in a good position to know about.
However, the fact is that Wikipedia does not, anywhere, offer an answer to the question, How do I fix inaccurate information about me and/or my organisation on Wikipedia? In fact, Wikipedia’s answer to that question is, basically, “You can’t.”
So what do people do in that situation? Those with time and inclination will set up sock-puppet accounts to make the change anyway. The socially powerful will reach out to the media and demand that the cange e made, as Roth has done. Those without time or power will shrug and walk away, determining that they won’t bother to interact with Wikipedia in the future. Those behaviours are actually encouraged by the way Wikipedia works.
That’s one thing. The other is that this affair has been a complete media win for Roth and a serious hit to Wikipedia’s reputation. It is true that almost all the media coverage took Roth at his word and failed to give Wikipedia’s side to the story. Whose fault is that? Perhaps there is nobody at Wikipedia charged with dealing with the press, and/or with with digging into the details of public disputes to ensure that Wikipedia’s side of the story is given. Certainly a journalist wanting to call Wikipedia to get their side of the story would probably stop looking for a phone number or email contact after a few minutes of frustrated poking around the site. So since nobody is the press contact for Wikipedia, it is nobody’s fault, I suppose.
Choices have consequences. Wikipedia has chosen to make it difficult for people to change inaccurate information about themselves, and that choice has the consequence that grumpy old men like Philip Roth will complain in public that his word isn’t good enough, and that smarter people will undermine your system and use pseudonyms to make the changes they want anyway. Wikipedia has chosen not to bother engaging with the media on the assumption that any interested party can easily review the changelogs and the talk page discussions, and that has consequences when a journalist is writing to a deadline, and finds that one side of the story has provided them with a good narrative and the other hasn’t.
These choices have consequences too.
Actually….no. So, on the first point, every page on Wikipedia links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us, which itself links through to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_problem/Factual_error_%28from_subject%29 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Article_subjects – I appreciate they’re not particularly clear, but the information is available. On the “since nobody is the press contact…” front we have lots of press contacts. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room (also linked to from “contact us”) points people at Jay Walsh, the Wikimedia Foundation’s head of communications, and we have a committee of volunteer comms people in a multitude of nations who can always be contacted (and have been). If we didn’t have a press contact or team of correspondents, we’d have seen the consequences of that a lot earlier than now.
Warning, TLDR
However, the fact is that Wikipedia does not, anywhere, offer an answer to the question, How do I fix inaccurate information about me and/or my organisation on Wikipedia? In fact, Wikipedia’s answer to that question is, basically, “You can’t.”
It’s actually pretty easy. You need to find the “contact us” link (on every page) and then pause when we explain what’s up – that we see a place we lapsed and it’s quickly fixed, or that you need to collate evidence, then talk to other editors and show them an evidence-based reason why the desired change would be correct for a neutral reference work.
People often don’t understand Wikipedia. It’s written by group collaboration not some single editor, it is explicit about evidence not anecdote, and it’s blunt about being unmoved by puffery/PR/spin/promotion/”looking better” absent evidence.
On the positive, these all help keep standards mostly high. Wikipedia’s also quite flexible, if you ask help and guidance. We want to, and we put ourselves out to. But you have to play a part also, actually learn what Wikipedia is and isn’t trying to achieve, before mouthing off about how let down you are. Many people should be let down, because they want bias added. So we require public-checkable evidence.
Imagine you had a dispute and you demanded help, but because you didn’t like the idea it might not be “snap of fingers” you instead yelled at the lawyer, yelled again when told not to do that, then stormed off venting how you shouldn’t have to fill in forms or explain your case to get what you want, and it’s everyone elses fault. In many things in life, you have to learn how to get stuff done and there may be procedural hoops to follow. I had a recent insurance claim where they wanted evidence, should I have stridently demanded I was right because I KNOW WHAT IS TRUE, that they ought to have trusted me on the spot, and instead posted a letter in the press? I spent time looking for the kind of evidence they needed, for my own benefit, and they paid in days.
No sugar coating on it… that’s normal everyday social life #101 for most people and we expect it here too. We all get frustrated, but poor conduct is not the resolution.
Side note: why didn’t Wikipedia make a firm media case? We’re writers. We aren’t in the PR business, we don’t usually need to discuss private requests in public to make a point. Any dialog we have with Mr Roth is appropriately left to his private email or on the wiki itself.
On the press contacts, I clearly was wrong. I had not appreciated that Wikipedia’s decision not to respond to Roth was a deliberate one.
On fixing articles – surely this and similar cases indicate that perhaps you might present the information a bit more transparently?
TL;DR again…
Oliver will say more, but that last is nail on head. Major work goes on behind the scenes to figure how to make Wikipedia much more accessible. Visual (rich text/WISIWYG) editors, user article feedback, we’re working on it, but nobody’s ever tried it before and as the tech side is funded on charitable donations and many decisions are made by consensus of thousands, we don’t have the resources of other major sites to throw a team of 100 on it, nor a single final chief manager to name “The Right Answer” so as to solve it by Christmas. We’d like it done way faster, too, we’re right with you there!
Faster, slicker, easy simple interface….. and two big reasons it’s not done that way. #1 is a long tradition of group collaboration and consensus forming, and #2 is a long term view of decades or more. Think politics, society and business. Every time a good social group and its intentions gradually slips into a privileged few with much say, and many without. Wikipedia as a concept is here for decades or longer. If this community fails every last piece of content is deliberately licensed so anyone on earth can pick up the baton and run. Everyone has the right to help make decisions, anyone can take on a wider role, make a reputation and help spread free knowledge. It makes some deliberations painfully arthritic and slow, or even odd (“why won’t Wikipedia allow even one advert? Because it might in 20 years encourage the walk towards dependence, laziness and bias”). But it keeps us more sure of staying ethical as a community and genuinely “grass roots” driven. Looking at history, the other way seems to risk corruption of the internal spirit. A charity might do its noble external role, but inside it’s become a corporation of thousands: people are hierarchied and few have much say. With luck, this one will still be a level field in decades, because as a community we deeply hold it’s for the best, and we fervently want it that way, even and especially those “at the top”.
It’s got costs, but it’s a good decision – and not just our say-so. Despite the occasional Roth to keep us on our toes, we’ve still come #1 of every social website monitored by ACSI’s annual satisfaction reports for 3 years straight since they began rating in 2010.
As to better communication with readers and those needing help, Oliver’s the guy.
I agree we need to do better at presenting such information – unclear documentation is a perennial problem, and not just for this sort of problem (ever tried using our help pages? Designed by committee in 2005. Scary things).
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Did anyone from Wikimedia Foundation attempt to contact any of the reporters from the Guardian, ABC, or LA Times? They’re all very easy to find, and generally receptive to posting as complete a story as possible.
It appears they ran with Roth’s version of events because Wikipedia’s version was as as opaque and difficult for outsiders to parse as a page’s changelog.
This was a PR mess that could have been easily avoided by a few proactive e-mails or phone calls from the Foundation, laying out the exact revisions you linked to here.
I don’t know; I can’t speak for the Foundation or its comms policy
.
Probably true, but (see previous comment) we’re writers. We aren’t in the PR business, we don’t usually need to discuss private requests in public to make a point. Any dialog we have with Mr Roth is appropriately left to his private email or on the wiki itself.
If the question really means “shouldn’t Wikimedia be more proactive about putting its case forward in situations like this where there’s another side to it?” then that’s a reasonable and useful debate. The question I’d have is, does a protracted argument in the media polarize or resolve an issue? To me, it polarizes, by its nature it asks people to confrontationally take sides. That’s anathema to a collaborative ideal where we focus on asking people to find ways to work together where possible rather than create mountains out of emo-molehills.
We can’t stop people ranting mistakenly, or the media initially in some cases swallowing it lock stock and barrel. It’s happened on many other stories too. But maybe over time they will figure out more often that there is often a second side, all by themselves (“I wonder if this guy told us the whole story?”) and check. That would be the best resolution of all.
“The question I’d have is, does a protracted argument in the media polarize or resolve an issue?”
It completely depends on a) the argument and b) how interesting it is to the reporters, editors, and readers.
In this particular case, I’d say the facts as laid out here would have more likely than not resolved the issue quickly. Mr. Roth’s characterization of both the timeline of events and Wikipedia’s content were quite misleading, and this post makes that clear.
The Wikimedia Foundation could have avoided the negative articles and reaction by being proactive in this situation, rather than assuming bloggers and reporters will take the time to a) contact Wikimedia and b) wait for a response.
Is that how journalism should work in an ideal world? No. But this is a case where a little pragmatism goes a long way toward helping the Foundation’s image.
I wanted to also reiterate a bit of irony I encountered regarding the Roth affair. Salon published this article that was sympathetic to Roth’s account:
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/07/philip_roth_vs_wikipedia/
Apparently they are quite entirely oblivious to the fact that the claims Roth sought to remove and referred to as “literary gossip” were attributed by Wikipedia to… Salon:
“Salon.com critic Charles Taylor argues that Roth had to have been at least partly inspired by the case of Anatole Broyard, a literary critic who, like the protagonist of The Human Stain, was a man identified as Creole who spent his entire professional life more-or-less as white. (ref: http://www.salon.com/2000/04/24/roth_3/)”
Wikipedia contained no misstatement – Salon very clearly was speculating, and ultimately proved incorrect. They take zero responsibility for this.
You, sir, summarised better than anyone else the whole point.
Definitely, DEFINITELY, thank you.
*bows hat-in-hand*
Hello Quominus, just one question: what does exaclty mean “According to some of my fellow sysops, he emailed our account unblocking software”? Even here on it.wiki many of us are discussing about the Roth case. I really want to understand if he emailed or not wikipedia and how. Beside all the rest I think this is a key point…
Thanks!
So, en.wiki has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:UTRS, which some editors wrote and host on the toolserver; it is a semi-automatic way of contacting administrators centrally to request an unblock. I understand he emailed this software.
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Note that the wording Roth quoted,
My novel “The Human Stain” was described in the entry as “allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard.” (The precise language has since been altered by Wikipedia’s collaborative editing, but this falsity still stands.)
was actually in his biography, not the article on The Human Stain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Human_Stain#Request_clarification
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philip_Roth&oldid=505395853#Career
In that article, it was not qualified beyond the “allegedly”.
What I take away from this thread is chronic ageism and ad himinem arguments. Roth is old and therefore too demented to understand the issues, not to mention grumpy. And anyone who finds fault with Wikipedia is too technically illiterate to use the internet properly. Only Neanderthals complain abut Wikipedia. Thanks for clearing that up.
That certainly wasn’t my intention (nor, I’d assume, the intentions of anyone here). Can you point to me where anyone mentioned age? Or the tone (rather than content) of his complaint?
Your phrase “aggrieved and confused ramblings of a man ignorantly discussing what he does not understand or remember” certainly has a strong whiff of judgment about his tone and time-related (hence age-related) mental faculties.
Also, your strange non-sequitur “Fuck. That. Noise. [..] *drops mic*” finish betrays a disinterest in discussing this seriously.
It’s certainly not my intention to communicate that “forgetting stuff is for old people” – I’m not sure where that’s coming from. I forget things regularly ;p.
I think you may be misusing “non-sequitur” (“Fuck that noise” is, at least, an understood idiom on those bits of the internet I circulate through) – regardless, the fact that we are having this conversation strongly suggests you may be interpreting my comments incorrectly.
Quite correct in your assessment here. Nobody needs to know the ins and outs of an organisation in order to complain or correct an error made by that organisation. If purchase a tin of beans in the supermarket and find it full of mouse droppings, I don’t need to have to understand the intricacies of canning or food distribution to complain about, and I certainly would expect a lecture on the subject by the shelf stacker.
Similarly with wikipedia if the article is full of crap I shouldn’t need to understand the intricacies of WP in order to get it fixed, and nor would I expect a lecture on the subject by snotty kids.
Knowing the distinction between “credibility” and “being a secondary source” is the intricacies of Wikipedia, to a former associate professor of English literature?
@Richard – I’m not sure your post merits a reply. You can’t distinguish between one sentence which is factually correct but improvable, and whole article “full of crap”. You can’t tell the difference between “presentation can be more pleasing to someone” and “product entirely foul/full of mouse droppings”. You seem to think a person needs to learn the whole of Wikipedia to click “contact us” as if they need to learn an entire power company’s business to find the customer service phone # on their bill. When the article Roth complained of was demonstrably more factually accurate than his own unfaithfully descriptive letter, you feel those pointing this out are “kids”.
Knowing that almost every website has a “contact us” link for the purpose is an “intricacy”?
Whom to, exactly?
I hope Roth does not waste any more of his time on Wikipedia. His time and his writing is too valuable.
I urge you to read The Breast. It appears to be an exemplary piece of Roth work, and the English language would be richer without it.
I think that wikipedia should change it’s tagline from “that anyone can edit” to “Let’s quickly demolish your point.”
Unfortunately, that’s really all the site comes down to. From the Haymarket riots to Philip Roth, he who shouts the longest and the loudest wins.
That is no way to run a ‘reference’ site. You only damage your credibility.
The original quote “Let’s quickly demolish your other point.” is from ‘A Wikipedia admin says: 17/09/2012 at 5:47 am’ (above.)
I’m sorry you find Wikipedia to work in this fashion: do you think, then, that Philip Roth’s actions (demanding the excision of literary criticism and then lying about his actions in the New Yorker) are acceptable, then?
Not to mention, regarding the Haymarket riots incident, do you really think that all an academic has to do is publish a book on a subject and then he has the right to go into the Wikipedia article and change it so that it refers to his version of events, completely overturning decades of scholarship on the topic, all before anyone else in that scholarly community has published a single review of his book?
Following on Denise Bukowski’s post, I think the ageism is implicit in the attacks on Mr. Roth’s cognitive functioning: “…Roth’s open letter is at best the (justifiably) aggrieved and confused ramblings of a man ignorantly discussing what he does not understand or remember….”; and ” I don’t know if Philip Roth is (a) unable to remember his own statements to the press, correctly characterise or describe the actions of him and his agents, read things he’s critiquing and understand the distinction between credibility and categorisation of sources….” Dementia is associated with aging to the extent “senile”, a once neutral word for being old is now a synonym for mental and physical deterioration associated with age. These quotes are two examples of ad hominem attacks in this essay, others being: “…or (b) simply trying to cause a fuss and maybe have the New Yorker bung him a few quid in exchange for acting like a whiny, sanctimonious child incapable of understanding why we’d obliterate coverage of his work’s literary criticism because The Author Says So”; and “Roth either didn’t actually read the article, or did but thinks that There Is No Truth But That Of Philip Roth.” Mr. Roth’s character is not the issue here; his character has no bearing on the truth or falsity of his statements.
I like–borderline love–Wikipedia. I use it regularly for purposes as different at researching drug side effects or learning a little about the Mennonite religion to finding out who sang lead on particular Beatles’ songs. If my memory is not too impaired (age 66), I gave a little money in response to a fundraising pop-up. The ideals behind Wikipedia, as I understand them, including doing for free and not taking ads, are righteous. Being righteous does not always translate into being right, nor does it mean that any critics are impaired or venial or evil.
What I focused on reading Mr. Roth’s Open Letter was not Wikipedia; the bulk of the essay was given over to reminiscence about two men, including the experience of one man that did provoke the train of writing that resulted in the Human Stain. Honoring past lives, and getting his legacy right seemed to be more the aim of the essay than attacking Wikipedia.
My apologies, then, if it came off as attacks implicitly aimed at his age – that was never my intention. I’m also informed that the last line came off as a veiled sexual joke (which I didn’t notice until multiple people pointed it out to me): I clearly need a sit-down with a shrink ;p
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