Angie: Convicted Enron CEO Ken Lay had barely assumed room temperature before Wikipedia’s geniuses went haywire.
Conspiracy theorists crawled out of the woodwork, feverishly posting updates to his bio with death-by-suicide musings, along with sentiments regarding his presumably-guilty conscience and the stress of the trial doing him in.
It took several overseers some time to control the Wikimob, finally citing the sheriff’s department and a TV station as their sources.
But even now, Lay’s Wiki-bio reads more like an opinion piece in the New York Times (plenty of references to Republicans, President Bush and Lay’s crimes, nothing about his accomplishments or philanthropy) than an authentic biography.
This is just more proof that the dubious online encyclopedia is more silly than serious… not to be trusted when facts count.
Speaking of counting… You can count on future Wikischolars to report that Lay’s not really dead, but hiding with Elvis or Howard Hughes, and his “death” is just a brilliant ploy to keep him out of the pokey.
Riiiight.
5 comments
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July 7th, 2006 at 3:40 am
Conspiracy Bob
Seems hard to believe he died of a bad conscience. With that much money it would be easy to fake a death, and meet up with Elvis in Cabo.
July 7th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Ben
… have you tried inserting that information into the article? Don’t complain about it unless you’ve tried to fix it and couldn’t.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
BJ
Change the Ken Lay story? It hasn’t even been *recorded* on Wikipedia.
However, the onesided rant is Wikipedia, perfectly wrought: Trapped in its own heated version of reality, and not to be confused by facts that don’t fit the hit-piece narrative.
Encyclopedic pretensions by that community would humiliate a more sentient group.
July 7th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Ben
Yyyyeah. It’s the encyclopedia anyone can edit. If you can find sources on Lay’s philanthropy, I’m sure you could successfully add a section about it. You’re right, some people might argue with you, but then, others might agree with you and support you as well. Writing on Wikipedia is about building consensus; if you have the patience to calmly do so, and you have verifiable sources backing up content written from a neutral point of view, you can get things into the ‘pedia.
July 8th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
BJ
@Ben.
re: “it is an encyclopedia”
Wrong. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It is a wiki that appears to function primarily as a pallative for an army of would-be writers with such low self-esteem or ethics that most contribute under the shadow of anonymity.
A history written by unschooled consensus is no more or less valid than any other output by mobs. I thought that Chairman Mao’s experiment in mob-learning thoroughly disabused the world of such nonsense.
I’ll have no quarrel with Wikipedia the day it stops pretending to be an encyclopedia.