Directory:Akahele/Tilikum and Wikipedia

A darkly amusing pair of links, made relevant in light of the CNN report yesterday:

Tilikum, the killer whale, according to Wikipedia on January 2, 2010.

"He is in fact very docile" -- 173.18.247.14

And Tilikum, the killer whale, according to Wikipedia on February 24, 2010, after the fatal incident.

"Maybe, he's not quite so docile..." -- JoelWhy

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2 Responses to Tilikum and Wikipedia

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Jon Awbrey

Ya Really Gotta Watch Those Wales …

Timothy Usher

Thanks for this post, Greg. The prevailing view among “responsible” Wikipedians is that misinformation isn’t particularly harmful, so long as it doesn’t appear in a biography of a living person. This example illustrates that misinformation about any subject has the potential to harm readers in unforeseeable ways. Who knows if our deceased trainer consulted the Wikipedia article to determine whether she was at risk? We’d like to think that someone would know better, but the fact is that countless people who ought to know better rely upon Wikipedia anyhow, simply because it’s free and easily accessible. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects should be shut down, by law if necessary, until the Wikimedia Foundation accepts that ensuring the accuracy of what it publishes isn’t just a good idea, but an ethical responsibility.