Dear Vikram, It is sometime since I responded to any of your mail. I also had no opportunity to see the telecast. Butr I read about suc h `interested' editions of falsifiers in a Hindu Report. Although Wikipidea may be open, the openeness also makes such falsifiers to edit and plant their own versions as well. We need not get phylosophycal about the a bsolute truth or absolute freedom etc. What we can do in a `free' society is to ensure that `eternal vigil is the price of liberty'. We who hold freedom to be most valid will have to be vigilant to go through the content of wikipedia when edited by `falsifiers' This price for the liberty has to be paid by a vigilant group. I am not much conversant about the functioning of wikipedia. It may be advisable for people like you to make people who are committed to the cause of maintaining truth about history and other subjects to act as vigilantes and rectify/neutralise such `wilful damnages created by falsifiers. Warm regards, VJK Nair
On 8/22/07, Vikram Vincent vincentvikram@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings! Yesterday, E-TV Kannada telecast a news story on how the content of the Wikipedia is being changed by organisations such as CIA, M$, others See links: http://wired.reddit.com/wikidgame http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/08/14/the-cia-really-is-editing-wi... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=12673258&oldid=12672433
I wanted to jot down the points that I had made.
- Wikipedia is one of the top 10 accessed sites in the world and is a
tool/platform to build a free knowledge society. 2. It is community maintained and peer moderated. All users have the right to be contributors. 3. People and organisations with vested interest will try to use the Wikipedia to propagate false/misleading information. 4. Despite this, when the Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica was compared, Encyclopedia Britannica had 3 errors while the Wikipedia had 4. Thus the relevance and factual and historical content of the data is maintained as authentic and close to the truth as possible.
While I was not able to catch the telecast I have to rely upon those who have to update on the exact contents of the news story. -- Regards Vikram Vincent +919448810822
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