User:Mindspillage/info

Wikipedia's article on John Seigenthaler, Sr. was begun on 15 September 2004 by an anonymous contributor, containing only his name. The unproven accusations were placed in the article on 26 May 2005 by a contributor editing anonymously from an IP address belonging to BellSouth. The article then read "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assasinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven. John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984. He started one of the country's largest public relations firm shortly thereafter."

Seigenthaler contacted Jimbo Wales by phone on October 5, after the material had been on the site for 132 days, to request the material be removed. Wales did so, removing the material from the history so that it would not be accessible. However, the information remained on content mirrors, other sites not controlled by Wikimedia which republish Wikipedia's content, for three more weeks.

Wikipedia has no information about the user who posted this information other than the IP address from which it originated, as we do not collect personal information about our contributors. Wikimedia helped Seigenthaler trace the IP to Bellsouth, who will not provide the name of the person who made this edit without a court order.

On November 29, an article by Seigenthaler appeared in USA Today about his experience with the Wikipedia article, sharply criticizing Wikipedia's openness to anonymous editing as well as its lack of consistent quality control.

Wales is currently addressing these concerns by working with the community to implement various systems of controlling the insertion of information and referencing all articles to credible sources.