It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker quitting his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility.
A man in Nashville, Tenn., has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Seigenthaler he had written the material suggesting Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy.
How this is funny, I don't know, but the guy should get into a lot more trouble than just leaving his job and not using Wikipedia. Falsely accusing someone of murder isn't a light accusation.
Wikipedia, while an exceptional idea, is proving not so exceptional in execution.
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