User:Ksm10
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Hello world!
About me: I am a 3L (third-year student) at Harvard Law School. I am an editor on the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the captain of the HLS Crew Team, and proud member of the somewhat less illustrious D-Bag Flag Football team.
I am currently writing my thesis on the application of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to Wikipedia. I figured it was mildly heretical for me to write such a paper without at least creating an account, and I plan on eventually vigorously editing the pages related to my thesis. If you're curious and want to learn more, talk to me!
This paper seeks to answer the following question: To what extent is Wikipedia liable for the damage caused in the following hypothetical?
In early 2006, in a fit of nostalgia brought on by viewing race results online, registered Wikipedia user Ksm10 created an article stub on his former college crew coach at the University of Michigan. He listed a few personal details (hometown, experience, etc.) and some of the team’s notable accomplishments during the coach’s tenure. The new article appeared on the Recent Changes page, and within 24 hours, two sysops had quickly made sure that it was legitimate (i.e., not spam or vandalism). Ksm10’s links to external sources sufficiently establish the notability of his former coach (he also wiki-linked the Coach article to and from the team’s article). He did not inform his former coach, as he planned to do so only after the article was more complete.
Though Ksm10 put the article on his watchlist to monitor accretions, he lost touch with Wikipedia when he began writing his 3L paper. Prior to “quitting” Wikipedia, Ksm10 had made substantial edits to a number of other articles and participated in votes for deletion. However, he was nowhere near the unofficial number of edits necessary for consideration as a sysop.
Joe, a high school senior rower, stumbled across the article after searching for “University of Michigan Men’s Varsity Crew Team.” Google listed the Wikipedia entry fifth in its search results, and the article stub on the coach was the only internal Wikipedia link to an article on an individual. Joe thought the article on Coach was missing a key piece of information that might be helpful to those considering involvement with the team in college: he had heard a rumor that the coach was terrible at coaching coxswains. Without regard to the Verifiability Guideline, he wrote, “While admired for his excellent training regimen for rowers, Coach’s coxswains are known for their stunted development and routinely T-boning bridges.” Even as an unregistered user, he was able to edit the stub to provide this additional information. The edit also appeared on the Recent Changes page. Several sysops reviewing new edits, unacquainted with the sport of rowing, took no notice of the defamatory nature of the statement.
Several months later, Coach discovered the entry after Googling his name. He was mortified. Never afraid of new technology, he went at first opportunity to the article about him, removed the defamatory statement and left a (signed) note on the discussion page indicating that he was the subject of the article and that the statement was simply untrue. A month later, at a large regatta in which both high schools and universities (including Michigan) competed, one of Coach's rowers told him that he had overheard a group of high school coxswains making some disparaging remarks regarding Coach's ability.
Suspicious, he checked Wikipedia after returning home from the regatta. To his surprise and annoyance, the statemet was still there. The discussion page had a comment by a sysop that explained that substantive autobiographical edits were improper. Frustrated, he searched the site for ways to get it removed permanently; he clicked on “Contact Wikipedia,” “Report a Problem,” “on an article about you” and sent an explanatory e-mail to info-en@wikipedia.org requesting deletion of the defamatory sentence. The recipients of such e-mails are a group of volunteer sysops. Upon review of Coach’s e-mail and the article, and noting the otherwise sparse edit history, the undertaking sysop deleted the offending sentence and put the article on her watchlist to ensure no further trouble. (Had the article been subject to a revert war, she would have protected it.) Despite the quick response, the damage was done: a number of key recruits chose to join other programs based on the negative comment on Wikipedia.
