A murderous week for Wikipedia: A murder suspect edits Wikipedia, Russia is kidding when it says it wants to censor Wikipedia.
Tech entrepreneur Minh D. Nguyen was charged with first degree murder in connection with the January 15th shooting death of the husband of Nguyen's ex-wife in Loudoun County, Virginia. The case made headlines because numerous news outlets—including the Washington Post, People, CNN, the Daily Mail, The Independent, Valleywag, and TechCrunch—identified Nguyen as a co-founder of Plaxo based on his Wikipedia article. Plaxo is an online address book and social networking service founded in 2002 by three individuals, one being Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook who was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the movie The Social Network. The connection to Parker proved irresistible to the media.
Nguyen, however, never was a co-founder of the company, which was actually founded by Parker, Todd Masonis, and Cameron Ring. Most publications reporting on the murder charge have corrected their mistakes regarding Plaxo or written follow-up stories. On his blog (January 21), John McCrea, Plaxo's former head of marketing, wrote that Plaxo's employees largely have no idea who Nguyen is:
| “ | Well, since Minh never set foot inside the doors of Plaxo, nor did a single day of work there, most of them, somewhat surprisingly, have actually never met him. To them, he’s just "that guy who keeps editing the Wikipedia page for Plaxo," listing himself as co-founder, despite it not being true. Every attempt to set the record straight over the years has been met with a rapid re-edit by Minh. | ” |
McCrea discussed the problem (January 22) with People. He said, "It sort of became a wrestling match. As soon as we'd edit the page [and remove Minh's name], he'd go back and put his name back in. It happened dozens of times over multiple years. Eventually, we gave up out of frustration." The claim that Nguyen was a co-founder of Plaxo was first added to the Wikipedia article for the company in June 2006 by User:Minhn21, who added it again in 2008 and 2010. It was also added by IP editors. It is not known if Plaxo sought assistance on Wikipedia or from the Wikimedia Foundation regarding this matter.
Why would Nguyen repeatedly make such a claim? Masonis told People that Nguyen was a childhood friend of Parker. DCInno spoke with (January 21) several former Plaxo executives who all said that Nguyen was present at several social gatherings at Parker's home near Stanford University around 2001, but that he played no role in the founding of the company. McCrea told DCInno:
| “ | Minh never, ever worked at Plaxo. The company was created in Silicon Valley while he was living on the East Coast. He never set foot in the building, and he had no role in the founding of the company. His claim of co-foundership is false by every possible definition of the term. | ” |
McCrea speculated on his blog that "The best I've been able to piece together is that he and Sean may have talked about the idea of a smarter address book, and somehow in Minh's mind that made him a co-founder."
At the time of the murder, the claim was again in the Wikipedia article, cited to a 2008 TechCrunch article. While many publications may have just glanced at Wikipedia, fact-checkers would have found that the information was supported by other sources, like the TechCrunch article, Nguyen's profile on LinkedIn, and the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Sean Parker.
Newsweek reported on comments made by Alexander Biserov to ITAR-TASS on January 22. Biserov is deputy head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, or Roskomnadzor, the agency charged with media and communications in Russia. Biserov told ITAR-TASS that Wikipedia was full of "a colossal number of mistakes" and said "My opinion on this, and I have said it many times, is I would ban Wikipedia, simply put it under censorship". The Russian government quickly backpedaled in a statement issued hours later via RusNovosti radio, which said "All this was said in jest, with irony and it should not prompt any kind of public reaction." Biserov's statement is the latest in a series of Russian government complaints about Wikipedia. In November 2014, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library announced it planned to create its own alternative to Wikipedia (See previous Signpost coverage).
Jerusalem Online reports (January 25) that Mashregh News, a news website affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has published an article detailing a presumably hypothetical assassination plan targeting the two adult sons of Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the sons of former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Mashregh published a photograph of the Netanyahu family with crosshairs superimposed over the two sons, as well as detailed information about their recent activities and travels. According to Jerusalem Online, most of this information appeared to have been taken from Wikipedia. According to the International Business Times, high-ranking Revolutionary Guard member Hussein Salami called for (January 25) the assassination in retaliation for the death of Iranian General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi, who was killed in Syria in an airstrike earlier this month, an act that Iran has attributed to Israel.
Discuss this story
23.21.190.125 currently redirects to http://www.comicvine.com/latveria/4020-41031/, not Wikipedia. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:43, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The subheading "Who holds back the electric car?" does not seem to relate to the text immediately following it. Maybe Jimmy Wales said something about electric cars but it was erroneously not included? There is no news link either.--greenrd (talk) 19:40, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]