I have updated this article with an explanation of where problems can occur. It's really to do with the providers. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:06, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why was this featured in the news? Anyway, I read the article by Mr. Seigenthaler... if he was offended, he or any one who knew him in depth should have reverted the changes or contacted an admin. It was just by chance that no one caught the mistake for that long. It's his loss if he thinks Wikipedia is a joke; the "millions" others mentioned in his article would vehemently disagree. --Madchester 07:19, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite. Even when the changes are reverted in Wikipedia, the libelous comment could have (and has) already spread all over the web. "It was just by chance that no one caught the mistake for that long." No. It's quite normal. He is not Bush or Hitler, so very few people know about the guy. Very few could have corrected that information. I don't think Wikipedia is a joke, but I do think this is a serious problem.BorisG 07:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Seigenthaler's biography on Wikipedia was tainted by a false and vandalous entry between May and September, 2005. The information was spread across dozens of Wikipedia mirrors before it was discovered and deleted. Seigenthaler wrote about his experience with the vandalism in USA Today on November 29, 2005. He expressed deep concern for the inability of anyone to determine who was responsible for the libel and decried online privacy laws, writing "And so we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research — but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them."

Wikipedia has had numerous problems with Internet providers who use proxies and dynamic IP addresses, which at times inadvertantly gives their customers complete anonymity. The IP address or usernames of all Wikipedia users is logged and it is quite clear who has written what in the page history. In the case of the vandalism of Seigenthaler's article, it was shown that the IP address 65.81.97.208 was the author of the edit, and the logs show that the edit was made at 00:29, May 27, 2005 (currently the revisions are deleted, only administrators can review the content, though anyone can view the time and IP addresses of the edits). A whois of ARIN shows that the IP address belongs to BellSouth, an major U.S. Internet Service Provider. A reverse domain name lookup resolves this to adsl-065-081-097-208.sip.bna.bellsouth.net.

Wikipedia has previously had issues with other large providers, such as Australia's Ozemail (their security team told Wikipedia administrator Ta bu shi da yu that he could block the IP address range he asked about, as they said it was only being used by their proxy servers - this proved false) and AOL, who uses centralised proxies which users cannot bypass. These providers have been less than responsive to Wikipedia when asked for assistance in dealing with page vandalism.

Of course it's neutral but I don't think it belongs onto the article page but onto the discussion page, or at least only for a few days. -- TomK32 07:22, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]