Wikipedia founder 'shot by friend of Siegenthaler'
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Saturday 17th December 2005 00:32 GMT
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been shot dead, according to
Wikipedia, the online, up-to-the-minute encyclopedia.
Apparently, the assassin was a "friend" of the victim of a recent
controversy which ironically, smeared former Robert F Kennedy aid John
Seigenthaler as a suspect in the assassination of both Kennedy brothers.
That claim, which the site carried for several months, along with the
assertion that Seigenthaler had lived in Russia, was eventually proved
false.
"At 18:54 EST on December 12, John Seigenthaler's wife, who was
infuriated at Wikipedia regarding the recent scandal regarding his role
in the Kennedy Assassination, came into the house, where Jim was having
dinner. Wearing a mask, he [sic] shot him three times in the head and
ran," reported the online reference source.
The free-for-all, write-it-yourself website prides itself on its fact
checking.
Wales made his fortune in bond trading before setting up the Bomis
pornography ring. A long time devotee of Ayn Rand, Wales recently
criticized the decision to grant federal funds to the victims of
Hurricane Katrina, according to reports on a web discussion board.
I Duce: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales
With co-founder Larry Sanger, who has since left the project, he helped
kick-start the project just as the dot com boom was collapsing, and now
he's the public face of Wikipedia. Before his "death", Jimmy Wales had
become a familiar sight on cable TV news, usually vowing to "tighten up"
the project's editing processes in response to the public scandal that
had broken that week.
His death will be mourned by many across the internet.
The news of the "shooting" even made the venerable London Times,
yesterday. The Times noted that after the first Seigenthaler scandal
broke, the now "deceased" Jimmy Wales had, as he has so often, promised
to tighten up a few nuts and bolts in the "encyclopedia's" editorial
processes.
He certainly had his work cut out.
"A cursory search today suggested that these procedures - which require
contributors to register basic details before posting articles - were
being defeated by a relentless wave of vandals, apparently co-ordinating
their assaults from a series of chatrooms dedicated to its demise."
"The loss of credibility has caused commentators to question whether
Wikipedia is destined to follow the LA Times's doomed experiment in
unrestricted internet comment, Wikitorial, which had to be closed down
after just two days under a bombardment of pornographic postings."
Is nothing sacred?
So is Wikipedia a source of reference, or just a great big game?
Speaking to The Register last month, former Britannica editor Bob
McHenry charictarized Wikipedia as a game, one of many multiplayer
shoot-em-up games that have been made popular by the spread of networked
computers.
"It's got the public playing the encyclopedia game," he told us
recently. "It's also like playing a game in the sense that playing it
has no consequences. If something goes wrong, you just restart. No
problem!" he said.
For the record, The Register must note that the ubermeister of Wikipedia
appears to be alive and well
The "news" of his death consisted of a random edit to his own,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/17/jimmy_wales_shot_dead_says_wikipedia/
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