A Wikipedia warning

Here's the reason so many of us preach that Wikipedia is a useful starting point for research and not the end-all be-all.

John Seigenthaler writes in USA Today (via Romenesko) that for 132 days, a false and malicious biography appeared under his name there.

John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.

One sentence is true, he writes: "I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer." The rest? Lies.

An editor did change the site shortly after it was created, to fix a misspelling.