Giles Hattersley admits Wikipedia error – Telegraph Blogs

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Shane Richmond

Shane Richmond is Head of Technology (Editorial) for Telegraph Media Group. He first joined the Telegraph in 1998 and has been Online News Editor and Communities Editor. He writes about all kinds of technology but especially Apple, iOS, ebooks and ereaders, and digital media.

Giles Hattersley admits Wikipedia error

Giles Hattersley has admitted that the reference in his Sunday Times piece to a libelous Wikipedia entry about him was an error. According to a message from him, published on Wikipedia, the error crept in at the editing stage.

Hattersley writes: "As to this thing about a Wikipedia entry – as far as I know, I've never had one. I think the line must have been tweaked at some stage (not by me) from talking about mentions of my name on the site to an actual entry."

The Sunday Times article about problems of inaccuracy on Wikipedia alleged that the entry for Giles Hattersley falsely claimed that the writer is the son of Labour politician Roy Hattersley. As I pointed out yesterday, there was no such entry. Indeed, it seemed that there never had been.

From there things got a little weird. Yesterday afternoon someone created a Wikipedia entry for Hattersley, with a short biog and a note about his claims regarding Wikipedia. A few hours later the entry was deleted by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

It's very unusual for Wales to personally delete an article and his action has started a debate within the community. Was he right to delete it? Did he follow the correct procedure? And just where was the Giles/Roy Hattersley reference in the first place?

Nobody has yet found any evidence anywhere on Wikipedia or in its archive of deleted material of the entry that Hattersley referred to in his article.

When a Wikipedia error is pointed out, even by someone who chooses not to correct it themselves, a correction is made quickly and transparently. In contrast, the error in the Times piece, which its author has acknowledged, remains uncorrected.

The Times, like The Telegraph, is bound by the PCC code to publish a correction of significant errors. The length of the debate on Wikipedia and the involvement of Jimmy Wales would suggest that this is such an error. Accordingly, I will be interested to see whether a correction appears in next week’s Sunday Times or on the article.

Giles Hattersley set out to argue that an open site such as Wikipedia is intrinsically less reliable than a professionally edited publication. Inadvertently, he has proved the opposite.

Update: The Times article has now been edited "to reflect Giles Hattersley's original" with an editor's note at the bottom explaining that the text was changed in error. The article now refers to "mentions of" Hattersley on Wikipedia rather than an entry for him, though Wikipedians are still unable to find where these mentions originally appeared.

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