Hi, "Patrick Ross." Why, exactly, should I want to "just edit" a plagiarized entry? Shouldn't I want to replace it with something that isn't plagiarized?

The current example is much closer to what Wikipedia's policies actually indicate should go into an article. The previous entry you noted doesn't meet our standards in any way, and it seems to me quite appropriate to reject it.

The text in the current entry is my own writing, although the underlying information came from the references cited. If you want to check, it shouldn't be hard to use Google's book search, which is what I did. Regrettably, the previous contributor didn't make that kind of effort.

As you note, the previous entry has been removed from the history. Since I didn't base any of my work on that version, it's not terribly relevant in terms of the history of the present text. Also, as you're obviously aware, previous versions in the history remain available to the public. Are you suggesting that we should continue to publish plagiarized or copyright-infringing material in this manner after becoming aware of it? You're perfectly welcome to republish other people's plagiarism or copyright infringements for your own purposes and at your own risk if you feel so inclined.

If it had been merely an error in the birthdate, I could have just edited as you suggested. Then you could see in the history how the content changes. When it's an entirely different article, there's no point, especially since you've written a nice account of the "pre-history" of the article.

Meanwhile, I have no idea whether the Wikipedia article will surpass the Library of Congress page as the top Google hit. My understanding of how they determine such things is vague at best, and I'll leave to them the responsibility for their search or cache results. I do note that so far, you have created as many links to the article as exist on Wikipedia.

My "nice account of the 'pre-history' of the article" isn't recorded on Wikipedia. Assuming Wikipedia ever is worthy of being studied by a historian, the historian would never know the birth pangs of this entry, that it was born in plagiarism and inaccuracy. Now we don't know how Encyclopaedia Britannica entries are born, but those editors don't claim that the beauty of their system is transparency, that you can look and see how the path to truth was laid out.

Here the path to truth was buried.

Patrick, you didn't answer Michael Snow's question: do you think that Wikipedia should have continued to publish plagiarized (and possibly copyright infringing) content via its history feature?

I am not advocating continued posting of plagiarized and possibly copyright-infringing content, even if it's buried in a history file. But it is disingenuous for Wikipediacs to claim that their approach to knowledge-building is transparent and accurately reflects the path taken, when any single individual such as Mr. Snow can just eliminate an entry entirely and create a new one.

What powers are given to Wikipedia users? If I decide I think the Bruno Kirby entry is garbage because it should be all about his sublime performance in Spinal Tap, can I delete his entry and start a new one? If I'm prevented from doing that, do others have that authority? And who decides which contributors have the power to eradicate entries, and thus, the history files associated with them? Is this in fact the hierarchy of Wikipedia that Nick Carr gets so much grief for highlighting? And does this hierarchy structure mesh with the mythology of the bottom-up Wikipedia so aggressively put forward by its followers? Who decides what gets "subsumed," and how?

Michael Snow is a Wikipedia administrator. According to their policy, "Wikipedia's practice is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active and regular Wikipedia contributor for a while, is familiar with and respects Wikipedia policy, and is generally a known and trusted member of the community." This strikes me as a perfectly sensible way to deal with the matter.

Presumably, if there had been a non-plagiarized article, and someone had added plagiarizing content, an administrator would have reverted the article back to its pre-plagiarized version rather than creating a brand new article. But since what had gone before was nothing but plagiarism, it strikes me as entirely reasonable to delete the previous version and start over.

I don't think anyone ever claimed that Wikipedia was purely "bottom-up," which likely isn't even possible. But it's still far more "bottom-up" than traditional publications. Notice that there are nearly a thousand Wikipedia administrators. In contrast, Britannica has about 4000 contributors, and presumably a much smaller number of editors.

Thanks for the info, Tim. As for your last comment, I'll just say, as a veteran of dozens of publications as both a staff journalist and freelancer, there is rarely a direct correlation between the number of editors and the quality of the editing.

As for your last comment, I'll just say, as a veteran of dozens of publications as both a staff journalist and freelancer, there is rarely a direct correlation between the number of editors and the quality of the editing.

My point wasn't that having 1000 editors makes for better editing, just that it makes it more "bottom up."

It's also worth noting that the record log of the deletion remains, with note:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=&page=Battista+Agnese

So I'm sorry, "Michael Snow," it does appear that, thanks to Google and my capture of their cache, the evidence of this sorry affair will live on in cyberspace.

Thanks, Tim Lee great post. Informative.

Why is the free culture movement so vilified here? That's an interesting question for me. I think the detractors of the free culture movement have realized that it will not go away, and that it is going to have major effects on the economy, and they're mad. Well fine.

Also, a large part of it is that the don't understand open source at all. They continue demanding that it have "a business plan."

Tim, that's what I perceived in the long post that you'd completed over at TLF. They just don't understand FOSS.