# The Lantern: LaRouche founded Wikipedia - Author: Joichi Ito - Date: 2004-10-05T22:52:57Z According to The Lantern, LaRouche founded Wikipedia.The LanternLaRouche, an outspoken political activist, set the record for consecutive attempts at the presidency by running eight times. He started Wikipedia.com, a Web site functioning as both a free encyclopedia and a wiki community, which allows users to add information to posted articles. He is known to be a promoter of conspiracy theories and has frequently been accused of being a fascist and an anti-Semite - claims he has denied. In 1988 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations but served only five.I DID NOT KNOW THAT. So who was that Jimbo guy I met in Linz. Hmmm... UPDATE:On October 4, 2004, an article titled “LaRouche PAC group sings, shouts, argues with Bush supporters” was published in The Lantern, the student newspaper at the Ohio State University. The published form of the article contained a terrible inaccuracy – Lyndon LaRouche was mistakenly credited as the founder of Wikipedia.com, the popular free online encyclopedia. Its founder is actually Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, an Internet entrepreneur based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Newspaper articles pass through the hands of various editors before publishing, a fact that the public often is not aware of. The original copy of the article submitted to The Lantern contained information about LaRouche obtained from and attributed to Wikipedia.com. Without the knowledge of other editors, a copy editor changed the article and inserted the erroneous information. The mistake was subsequently printed and published online. The author of the article and a frequent Wikipedia user, Joktan Kwiatkowski, took up the issue with The Lantern immediately after discovering the mistake and also arranged for corrections to be made in print and online form following correspondence with Wales. However, the article was referenced in many weblogs and message boards, and Kwiatkowski was unfairly ridiculed and characterized as inaccurate. The article was the first submitted by Kwiatkowski to The Lantern, and he received an apology from the paper over the incident. He has contacted bloggers that circulated the article, and some have already extended their support in an effort to help clear his name. --- #### Categories Heckling, Wiki