by Stephen
Wikipedia and the Angry Golfer
February 22, 2007 in Sports, Web by Stephen
I have never been a fan of Fuzzy Zoeller, but whoever did this to him on Wikipedia was very wrong to do so.
Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing to track down the author who posted what he describes as a defamatory paragraph about him on the Internet reference site Wikipedia.
Zoeller’s attorney, Scott D. Sheftall, said he filed the lawsuit against a Miami firm last week because the law won’t allow him to sue St. Petersburg-based Wikipedia. The suit alleges someone used a computer at Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami education consulting firm, to add the information to Zoeller’s Wikipedia profile.
Wikipedia, which describes itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” leaves it to a vast user community to catch factual errors and other problems.
The paragraph in question has been removed, but the information has been picked up by other Web sites. The lawsuit said it alleged Zoeller abused drugs, alcohol and his family with no evidence to back up the statements. The derogatory information was first added in August 2006.
So let me get this straight. Anybody who posts something that’s not factual on Wikipedia can get sued now? Are there really enough lawyers in the US to deal with this?
The suit seems silly to me. As wrong as it was to post that about him, I don’t agree that the person should be sued.