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column by Frank Ahrens. Ahrens declared himself "a fan of
Knowledge (XXG)" but said the incident "exposed the critical weakness of Knowledge (XXG) that prevents it from becoming the go-to source for Internet knowledge that it ought to be." He pointed to the expectations of reliability people have for
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appeared, indicating that the spokeswoman only confirmed the death, not the cause; the report of a heart attack had come from a pastor at the family's church. By the time
Reuters published, more than six hours had transpired since the initial reports of Lay's death. Reuters previously contributed to
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on his blog, Lih concluded that the evolution of the Lay article was actually fairly routine for the circumstances. From his background as a journalism professor, he compared it to the typical "sausage factory tour" of a newsroom where the parts of a story are put together as a deadline approaches.
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All of this transpired by 14:12 UTC, when the article was semi-protected, which cut down on the problems with this particular issue in the article. Interestingly, before semi-protection all of the edits indicating a cause of death, whether correct or erroneous, came from unregistered users. Reuters
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to suicide two minutes later, and
Reuters only began its chronology after this point. Their timeline included both causes being mentioned simultaneously, then backpedaling to saying the cause was "yet to be determined", an edit attributing the supposed suicide to Lay's "guilt of ruining so many
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on CNN.com put it, "rather irresponsibly" according to Lih. The accuracy of the story itself garnered less objection, but the reporting in the body of the article didn't explicitly reach the conclusion contained in the headline, much like last month's
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that it is problematic to approach
Knowledge (XXG) "with the same expectations as a uniformly and systematically edited publication". He suggested trying to manage expectations while also systematically improving quality through such efforts as
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Lih concluded that the
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did note the later insertion and removal of some "speculation as to the cause of the heart attack" connecting it with stress from Lay's recent criminal trial and conviction.
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came out with a widely reprinted story focusing on some of the early changes to Lay's article, with the headline "Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on
Knowledge (XXG)".
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noted, in the rush to put the story out on its wire service, Reuters itself managed to misreport the source of its own information about the cause of Lay's death. The
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reporting Lay's death (at 14:01 UTC) was actually in error, as it gave the date of his death as 3 July. This was fixed in the following edit, and the
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conference purporting that
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last week brought renewed media attention to how editors respond to current events on
Knowledge (XXG) articles.
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dismissed the notion that "confusion" was the problem or that
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Aside from this error, some criticism was directed at the sensationalism of the headline.
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an encyclopedia and the problems when this is misused to serve an agenda. On the CBS
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of the story said the information came from a Lay family spokeswoman. Subsequently a
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subsequently issued a correction and changed its headline after Wales complained.
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News reports of Lay's death began appearing around 14:00 UTC on 5 July. The
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lives", and finally restoration of a heart attack as the cause.
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Reuters tracks evolution of Ken Lay's death on
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also carried a follow-up on the story Sunday in its
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424:No comments yet. Yours could be the first!
192:publicity over a mistranslated quote from
496:Knowledge (XXG) Signpost archives 2006-07
18:Knowledge (XXG):Knowledge (XXG) Signpost
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134:The sudden death of former Enron CEO
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175:Criticism and analysis of the story
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156:first reported cause of death
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152:first Knowledge (XXG) edit
146:How the editing unfolded
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439:What do you think of
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445:Share your feedback.
406:To follow comments,
356:More stable versions
376:Features and admins
305:Features and admins
253:The Washington Post
216:subsequent headline
401:Discuss this story
386:Arbitration report
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417:purging the cache
381:Technology report
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283:Also this week:
189:corrected version
181:Mathias Schindler
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127:Michael Snow
57:PDF download
478:Suggestions
371:In the news
194:Jimmy Wales
136:Kenneth Lay
107:X (Twitter)
313:T.R.O.L.L.
309:B.R.I.O.N.
293:M.A.N.I.A.
212:Andrew Lih
45:Share this
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