Fuzzy Zoeller Sues Over Libelous Wikipedia Page
Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller has sued a Florida company for libel over edits made to his Wikipedia entry from one of the company's computers.
Although I reported one of Wikipedia's best-known gaffes -- project founder Jimmy Wales edited his own page to remove credit from a former colleague -- I'm a defender of the project. I think it's an amazing experiment in collective fact-gathering that deserves to be nurtured, no matter how many different ways Seth Finkelstein proves it should've been smothered in infancy.
Wikipedia's response to the Zoeller suit has become another one of those gaffes.
Wales often touts Wikipedia's transparency as a virtue because the site maintains a public edit history of changes made to each page. Last September, in a game of mine's bigger between Wales and Encyclopedia Britannica Editor-in-Chief Dale Hoiberg in the Wall Street Journal, Wales made this observation:
Britannica doesn't display its rough drafts, or the articles before being checked by a copy editor; Wikipedia does. We think this sort of open transparency is healthy and results in greater quality than doing everything behind closed doors.
In response to Zoeller's suit, Wikipedia has removed all edits he claims are libelous from the history of the page. No one can go back and review the drafts that are central to the suit.
The following paragraphs, which are still in the Answers.Com mirror of Wikipedia, are the material that sent Zoeller's lawyers into attack mode:
Zoeller went public with his alcoholism and prescription drug addiction, explaining that at the time he made those statements, he was "in the process of polishing off a fifth of Jack (Daniels) after popping a handful of vicodin pills". He further detailed the violent nature of his disease, recalling how he'd viciously beat his wife Dianne and their four children while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. He also admitted feigning a ruptured spinal disc in 1985 so as to be prescribed a multitude of prescription medication. [4]
He sought professional help and mended his fractured familial relationships. In May 2006, Zoeller said in an interview with Golf Digest magazine that he hadn't beaten his wife in nearly five years.
The lawsuit, which Zoeller filed as "John Doe," called these paragraphs reckless, false and defamatory and asked for $15,000 in damages. For 13 days, Wikipedia said he was a drunken pill-popping wife and child batterer.
Zoeller's target may be easily found, since the person's edits reveal an '80s hair metal aficionado who can't be hard to ID at a small company.
It's pretty clear that Wikipedia's only as good as the ability to identify and punish encyclopedic wrongdoers. One dirty Ratt fan might have ended the era in which anonymous cranks could edit the 12th most popular site on the web.
Was the First Blog a .Plan File?
The 10th birthday of Scripting News April 1 is likely to usher in a bunch of "blogging turns 10" press coverage, since Dave Winer hasn't been shy about staking his claim as an originator of the medium.
Though he didn't call the site a weblog until February 1999, Scripting News employed a link-heavy, short take, reverse chronological style adopted by hundreds of web publishers, especially after UserLand Software began free hosting on EditThisPage.Com later that year.
The first blog I recognized as a different kind of web site was Harold Stusnick's Offhand Remarks. When Stusnick began his blog in September 1997, he credited Winer and Michael Sippey.
While doing some research on the finger protocol for a networking project in Sams' Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days, I found a site that ought to be mentioned among the earliest blogs: Blues News.
Blues News sprang from the PC game programming community, which had a lot of coders spreading news via .plan files read over finger in the mid-'90s. The first posts from the site, which date back to July 1996, follow all of the characteristics of an early blog.
I've never thought of finger as a precursor to blogging, but .plan files share several things in common with early blogs: reverse order, tech-heavy content and an emphasis on personal activities.
For my book, I had trouble finding anyone who's still updating their .plan file. The last active person in the fingosphere may be Id Software programmer Timothee Besset, who posted on Feb. 2 about a new release of Doom 3.
The Game Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Lady Showers
Michael Medved, the film critic who's become a right-wing radio host, is spending a lot of time thinking about naked athletes taking showers together:
Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn't welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they'd welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright "hot") most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she's grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.
I would be uncomfortable taking a shower with Michael Medved.
Iraq Poll Touted by Drudge Doesn't Add Up
There's a word curiously absent from Matt Drudge's story about a new poll of 800 Americans on the Iraq War:
In the wake of the U.S. House of Representatives passing a resolution that amounts to a vote of no confidence in the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, a new national survey by Alexandria, VA-based Public Opinion Strategies (POS) shows the American people may have some different ideas from their elected leaders on this issue. ...
The survey shows Americans want to win in Iraq, and that they understand Iraq is the central point in the war against terrorism and they can support a U.S. strategy aimed at achieving victory, said Neil Newhouse, a partner in POS. The idea of pulling back from Iraq is not where the majority of Americans are.
By a 53 percent -- 46 percent margin, respondents surveyed said that Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw troops from Iraq.
The word Republican's never used to describe Public Opinion Strategies, a polling firm whose pro-GOP sentiments are made clear on its web site, where the company responded to the November election with a press release titled "Public Opinion Strategies mourns Republican losses."
For some reason, the partisan nature of POS isn't being mentioned by Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, the New York Post and popular right-wing blogs such as Power Line, WizBang and Outside the Beltway. The last one's the most glaring omission, since Outside the Beltway blogger James Joyner is married to the company's chief operating officer.
When you examine the actual polling questions and results, POS made some interesting choices in the language for question four:
Which one of the following statements regarding the U.S. involvement in Iraq do you MOST agree with...
17 percent: The US should immediately withdraw its troops from Iraq.
32 percent: Whether Iraq is stable or not, the US should set and hold to set a strict timetable for withdrawing troops
23 percent: While I don't agree that the US should be in the war, our troops should stay there and do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country.
27 percent: The Iraq War is the front line in the battle against terrorism and our troops should stay there and do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country.
Even in a poll crafted by a GOP firm, only 27 percent believe Iraq's the "front line in the battle against terrorism," which is the rationale most consistently offered by President Bush over the 1,436 days of this war. Amomg the slim majority who oppose withdrawal, 23 percent wish the war hadn't been started in the first place.
Defending WordPress MU from Splog Abuse
Over the weekend most of my new WordPress MU weblog servers were hit by splogs -- spam blogs created by bots and filled with links to commercial sites.
I added a WordPress hacker's unofficial patch that requires users to fill out a captcha to create a new blog. The patch modifies wp-signup.php and adds a new file, wp-valid.php that generates the captcha graphic using code from the Quick Captcha PHP script.
The first two active blogs to spring up on these servers are Political Fretwork and the Ad Whisperers.
Update: I don't like how captchas break accessibility for visually impaired people, so I'm looking for a way to prevent that.
Hanker for a Hunk o' Cheese
Game designer Kenneth Hite inflicts Stilton cheese on an unsuspecting friend:Every year at DunDraCon, xomec and I go across to Whole Foods and lunch alfresco on the fruits of their prepared foods section, finishing up this exercise in yuppie Bohemia by splitting a wedge of Stilton. This year, Greg Stafford joined us, and took a tiny morsel of Stilton just to be sociable -- he didn't like blue cheese, or his doctor had given him some farcical warning about cholesterol, or whatever.
Greg eats the morsel ... "Oh. You don't often encounter something you taste quite that far up into your nose."
Greg tries another, somewhat larger morsel... "I think I can feel it behind my eyes, now. I'm going to try for my ears, next."
One delicate slab later ... "It worked! It's going up my Eustachian tubes! It'll be in the roots of my hair, next! No more ... this has to end here!
A Comment on Robert Scoble's Lovemaking
Robert Scoble this morning:
... Kathy Sierra is one of the best bloggers out there. She makes love to us with every post.
It'll be interesting to see how his commenters respond. Techbloggers don't often attempt to channel Barry White. I know I'm being obnoxious, but I have to ask whether Scoble would whip out that metaphor for a male blogger of his affection.
In the name of science, please expose yourself to the following hypothetical Scobleizations and let me know which one makes you the most uncomfortable in your workplace.
... Eugene Volokh is one of the best bloggers out there. He makes love to us with every post.
... Jeff Jarvis is one of the best bloggers out there. He makes love to us with every post.
... Dave Winer is one of the best bloggers out there. He makes love to us with every post.
From my experimentation, I think this only sounds natural when you try it on a blogger with a French-sounding name:
... Loïc Le Meur is one of the best bloggers out there. He makes love to us with every post.
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