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On Sunday, the New York Times published a story naming the author of a controversial and false Wikipedia article about the longtime journalist John Seigenthaler Sr.In the Wikipedia article, the then-anonymous author wrote that Seigenthaler, once an assistant to Robert Kennedy, may have been involved in his assassination, as well as that of his brother, President John F. Kennedy.

The article stayed on Wikipedia--the free, open-access encyclopedia--for four months before Seigenthaler finally got the service's founder, Jimmy Wales, to agree to take it down. Shortly afterward, Seigenthaler published a scathing Op-Ed piece in USA Today, attacking Wikipedia's accountability and credibility.

In the days that followed, a San Antonio, Texas, book indexer named Daniel Brandt set out to find the article's author. Brandt, who had had his own problems with a faulty Wikipedia biography, also runs Wikipedia Watch, a sometimes paranoid, sometimes rational Web site that seeks to keep the project honest. He also runs Google Watch, a similar site about the search leader.

Following clues about the IP address of the computer used to post the Seigenthaler article, Brandt set out to find its author and in the process demonstrate some of Wikipedia's core problems. Over the course of two days of sleuthing, Brandt traced the IP address to a small courier service in Nashville, Tenn., and within hours, the culprit, Brian Chase, confessed directly to Seigenthaler.

CNET News.com recently tracked down Brandt and picked his brain about why he got involved in the search for Chase and why he thinks Wikipedia is flawed.
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Read More / Source: News.com