November 6, 2007 | Online

Wikipedia cleared of outing gay men

On Monday, a judge in France of any wrongdoing concerning questionable content on its website.

Three people took Wikimedia to court after articles appeared on the site revealing they were gay. Considering this an invasion of their privacy, they sued for $100,000 in damages. But the judge didn't agree, stating "the Wikimedia Foundation's responsibility ... has not been clearly established" in the case.

"When we are informed of this type of mistake we always try to react in the following hours to withdraw such information," said Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation's board. Devouard argued the company does whatever it can to remove hurtful, or incorrect, information as soon as they possibly can. [more]

Wikipedia was created as a web-based encyclopedia project. The content is free, and is actually written and edited by anonymous users around the world. Visitors do not require any special experience to contribute; people of all ages and cultural and social background can write Wikipedia articles.

But as more of the online world becomes open source, easily manipulated and altered by anyone with a computer and time on their hands, these legal challenges will surely increase. Who would have expected something as innocent as an encyclopedia could be so easily twisted into a tool for online bullying? The wonders of modern technology...