Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has launched a strongly-worded attack on controversial whistleblowing site Wikileaks, accusing it of risking lives with some of its recent Afghan war disclosures.
At the World Capital Markets Symposium conference in Kuala Lumpur, he also expressed annoyance at the way the site had appropriated the term 'wiki', which in Wales' view implies that a site allows contributions from users, which Wikileaks doesn't.
"I would distance myself from WikiLeaks, I wish they wouldn't use the name, they are not a Wiki. A big way they got famous in the first place was by using the word Wiki, which was unfortunate in my view," he was reported by AFP as saying.
Associates of Wales at the Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia have in the past vented their annoyance at the assumption that the two sites have a connection to one another when no connection exists.
The latest broadside could be part of a concerted effort to disconnect Wikipedia from the cuckoo in its nest, as Wikimedia sees it.
However, Wales's most pointed remarks were saved for Wikileaks' recent Afghan War Diary revelations, which seriously upset the US military.
"I think it is really important when we have sensitive information, that we do rely on responsible journalists to sort through it for us [...] It's much better than dumping all kinds of crazy information online and get people killed," Wales was quoted as telling conference-goers.
"I don't think Julian Assange [Wikileaks' founder] wants those people killed, however if he irresponsibly follows the policy of releasing absolutely everything, it's incredibly dangerous for those people," Wales added.
Since its appearance in January 2007, Wikileaks has been on a fast track towards becoming the most contentious popular website in internet history.
The serious controversy began earlier this year with the posting of a video appearing to show US helicopter pilots unnecessarily gunning down civilians in Iraq, a video which went on to star on YouTube.
This was followed in late July by the Afghan War Diary, a huge cache of previously top-secret files detailing events from the war in Afghanistan that the Us and other NATO militaries would rather the world did not see,
Julian Assange reportedly went into hiding, while the US serviceman believed by some to have leaked some or all of the files to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, was arrested and charged.
Recently, its servers were moved to a hosting site in a former nuclear bunker under Stockholm, not long after its founder, Julian Assange, was questioned over alleged molestation accusations in Sweden.
Comments
Wnt said: According to its own story the US military allowed a soldier broadly critical of the war demoted for fighting facing early discharge openly violating the militarys anti-gay regulations to have unrestricted access to hundreds of thousands of documents about countries all over the world on both the SIPR and JWICS networks having nothing to do with his job description without so much as tracking the downloads and asking what hes up to If Assange hadnt published the names they would still be knocking around in the databases of any country that knows how to plug a cable into the back of the computer And one of them would have told the Taliban about the stuff sooner or later to get a hostage released or a pipeline left alone or an opium deal And those informants would have just turned up dead no comment and it might have been fifty years before someone noticed that a lot of them had talked to Americans So I see Assange as a life-saver not a killer
consciousness said: The authoritative perspective Lets hide that we kill people or our killers may get killedHow can we stop the killers if not by exposing themAlso a wiki is a type of software which can be configured differently and build totally without any part of code used at wikipedia but seems Jimmy probably doesnt get that part neither
GetReal said: The serious controversy began earlier this year with the posting of a video appearing to show US helicopter pilots unnecessarily gunning down civilians in Iraq a video which went on to star on YouTubeLove the use of appearing Hollywood couldnt have contrived that videoAs to the assertion that Its much better than dumping all kinds of crazy information online and get people killed Surely exposing the excesses of the American forces will ultimately save lives on all sides
RSebire said: I dont know the freedom of information act in free peoples hands allways leads to murder Justice will not be done anytime soon
GetReal said: If governments werent so frightened of the truth coming out about what went on in iraq and is going on in Afganistan there would be less need for organisations like WikileaksAbout the only thing America learned from Vietnam was that if you go to war you either leave the press at home or keep them in your kitbag