Ron Livingston, growth, and Wikipedia
Today’s Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog has a piece about Ron Livingston’s lawyers filing a lawsuit against an anonymous Internet user, in an attempt to identify who’s been editing his Wikipedia article to add rumors that he’s gay. The best legal description I’ve found is at the Copyrights & Campaigns blog:
The complaint includes claims for libel, false light, and violations of Livingston’s statutory and common-law right of publicity, and seeks actual and punitive damages. Presumably Livingston will seek discovery (IP and email addresses and other identifying information) from Wikipedia and Facebook, which they hope will identify the poster. Livingston can then name the individual in the complaint, and proceed against him. Section 230 won’t protect the individual; it only shields the service (i.e., Wikipedia or Facebook) that hosted the material.
The suit is here, as Coupleguys, Inc. vs. John Doe.
In being interviewed by the reporter of the piece, I explained the Streisand effect to him. He mentioned this phenomenon of Livingston trying to combat edits that he’s gay but perhaps bringing more attention to this rumor in the process. The sticky situation about Livingston’s lawsuit (at least according to LGBT groups) is whether calling someone gay is actually “maliciously altering” his article.
My comments about the case pertained instead to the sticky issue of people notable enough to be in Wikiepdia, but not enough to have legions of watchdogs.
According to Andrew Lih, author of “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia” (Hyperion), inaccuracy or vandalism problems are difficult to stop for people who are “notable but not extremely famous,” a category Livingston, best known for his roles in “Office Space”and “Sex and the City,” falls into. Lih, a registered Wikipedia editor and one of 1,000 administrators who oversee the site [his wife is also a reporter for the Journal], said Madonna’s Wikipedia page may have dozens of people watching out for abuse, whereas someone like Livingston rarely receives that kind of attention.
This is roughly the same dynamic that led to the Seigenthaler case, where a fairly notable journalist didn’t have throngs of passionate folks looking out for his article.
And perhaps that’s my worry about a smaller user community than was here in 2007. As the number of articles increase, are there enough watchdogs to keep article quality high, or are other technical measures (flagged revisions, semi-protection, et al.) needed for maintaining quality?
Erik Zachte and Erik Moeller of the WMF blogged recently that contrary to other studies, the core “active editors” has remained stable of late.
On the English Wikipedia, the peak number of active editors (5 edits per month) was 54,510 in March 2007. After a more significant decline by about 25%, it has been stable over the last year at a level of approximately 40,000
Is it enough for that community to have the same numbers, year on year, when that same period saw a growth of over 500,000 articles?
I cannot say that I know, but it is something that gives me pause.
December 16th, 2009 19:15
I see that you subscribe to the Wikipediot Policy of WP:NOX (No Original Excuses).
All these years after Seigenthaler, and all you can come up with is WP:BTV (Blame The Victim) cop-outs like the following:
It’s his fault for not being famous enough to deserve a non-defamatory article.
Then, to top it all off, you amplify the defamation by referring to the Streisand effect:
It’s his fault for trying to censor information — information that “wants to be free” of little details like responsibility and truth.
Oh, and let’s not forget the icing on the cake:
It’s his fault for being a bad old gay-basher.
Well, it has nothing to do with that, as anyone who does any amount of Investigative Journalism at all can see:
It’s the Casting Director Lee Dennison Story!
December 17th, 2009 05:51
Andrew, what seems to “give you pause” is the Wikimedia Foundation’s and Jimmy Wales’ utter inability to take charge and put ethics, responsibility, and human decency before slavish devotion to unaccountable, irresponsible “free culture”.
While that may merely give you pause, it makes nauseous most thinking people outside of the Wikipedia sphere of mind-altering influence.
This isn’t about being gay, or not being gay, or not having lots of people “watching” your article. Even articles watched by lots of people suffer the same disgraceful defamation. Do you think the 100 articles about the U.S. senators are watched enough? These 100 articles were viewed approximately 12.8 million times in the fourth quarter of 2007, but they were deliberately wrong 6.8% of the time, and the mean duration of a malicious edit on those articles was 24 hours.
You’re on the wrong path toward resolution of this problem, and that’s disappointing because I would have expected better insight from you.
Here is some data, for any of your readers interested in data rather than platitudes:
http://www.mywikibiz.com/Wikipedia_Vandalism_Study
December 22nd, 2009 04:28
To Jon: your comments represent a misreading of the post.
The point is actually the opposite of finding “fault” (your word, not mine) with Livingston, Seigenthaler, or any notable but not massively famous person. The issue is whether Wikipedia has a systemic flaw with these subjects, which happen to make up a significant chunk of its articles. If what’s needed is a flock of passionate followers of the article, then stagnant (or “stable”) editor community is problematic in the long term.
December 23rd, 2009 01:55
Andrew,
I read what you wrote, and I can see that you wished to exculpate yourself from the spin of the WSJ interview.
But your phrasing, wittingly or otherwise, is tributary to a long-running stream of rhetoric that besplatters the victims more than the perps.
So I’m sure you’ll be more anticipatory of that likelihood in future e-missions.
Jon Awbrey
December 31st, 2009 11:49
Here’s a bit of a followup, for those of us who still care about journalistic responsibility:
Ron Livingston, Wikipedia, Google, and the Sourness of Grapes.