Lays--Betcha can't beat just one
Kenneth Lay is dead. He is the ex-CEO of ex-Enron, George Bush's top fundraiser and "Kenny boy" to the president. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, caught the death pretty quickly. The article flailed around within minutes of the announcement of his death, some listing the causes as heart attack, some as suicide. One even said that "the guilt of ruining so many lives finaly led him to his suicide." The Washington Post trashed the encyclopedia for this flailing.
There's often a smug analysis of new, online entities because they don't measure up to the standards of the venerable media, even though there's people alive who were older than television and radio and trees older than newspapers.
Wikipedia is a new kind of entity; it's not just an online encyclopedia, it's a collaborative encyclopedia. It functions differently, because it doesn't have an editorial staff, or rather it has an ad hoc one. I think that it's amazing that they had an entry up that quickly at all.
The real issue is going to be whether Wikipedia's entries become shaded by political opinions to an unacceptable amount. So far, there's not a huge amount of evidence saying that is, and after all, conventional reference books are also a product of their times, even if academics don't like to admit it. I'm sure that if I looked up "negro" in a 19th century reference book, I wouldn't like the answer.
And as for Lay, well, he died peacefully vacationing in Snowmass, Colorado instead of going to prison for 30 years as was likely. Perhaps he can lead the charge for fundraising in Hell in advance of the next wave of energy executives and arrogant politicans.
Posted on July 11, 2006
