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michaelOfGeorgia -> RE: Professional Wrestler Chris Benoit Dead (6/29/2007 4:26:48 AM)
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Wikipedia told of death 14 hours before bodies found
By CHARLES YOO, SAEED AHMED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/28/07
In what was a poorly thought through prank or an eerie forewarning, someone apparently reported the death of Chris Benoit's wife on Wikipedia — the online open source encyclopedia — more than 14 hours before police discovered her body, along with her son's and husband's, at the pro wrestler's Fayette County home.
An anonymous user edited the biography of the wrestler on Monday at 12:01 a.m., said Sandra Ordonez, communication manager for the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the encyclopedia.
Authorities discovered the bodies at the Benoit's Green Meadow Lane home that afternoon, at 2:30 p.m.
The Monday morning posting said: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the [ECW] Extreme Championship Wrestling Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy."
Adding to the mystery, the anonymous poster used a computer whose internet protocol, or IP, address was traced to Stamford, Conn., where the headquarters for Benoit's employer, for World Wrestling Entertainment, is located.
Investigators think Benoit, 40, killed his wife Friday and his 7-year-old son Daniel Saturday. He placed Bibles next to their bodies, authorities say. Sometime Sunday he hanged himself using a weight-machine pulley.
The posting now raises questions of who, if anyone, knew about the deaths and if so, when.
"We are looking at that, trying to track down the IP address," said Fayette Sheriff's Lt. Tammy Pope in a statement to WAGA-TV. "It's either true or it's a hoax."
Anyone can post and edit content on the Web encyclopedia. Further more, an IP address, which is a unique set of numbers that every machine connected to the Internet carries, does not necessarily have to be broadcast from where it is registered.
The IP address from which the 12:01 a.m. addition was made had been flagged for "vandalizing" other Wikipedia entries in the past, ABC News reported.
Earlier this month, the same IP user also edited a post about WWE wrestler Chavo Guerrero Jr., a close friend of Benoit's who reportedly was the recipient of at least one of the text messages Benoit sent over the weekend before the discovery of the bodies.
In that edit, the IP user took out a damaging description of Guerrero from the post, ABC News said.
Wikipedia does recruit volunteer editors who troll the entries to ensure that facts within posts are properly attributed.
According to a timeline posted on Wikinews, which is the news source of the nonprofit foundation, within an hour of the 12:01 post, the edit had been changed with the comment: "Need a reliable source. Saying that his wife died is a pretty big statement, you need to back it up with something."
Another hour went by. Then a second anonymous edit, using what appears to be an Australian Internet service provider, added the attribution: "according to several pro wrestling websites."
Again, the edit was changed after 20 minutes with the comment: "Saying 'several pro wrestling websites' is still not reliable information."
The posting was brought to the attention of the foundation, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., and an employee left a message with Fayetteville authorities about 11 a.m. Tuesday.
"We provided the IP address, and I guess they were investigating," Ordonez said.
The Chris Benoit entry, updated hundreds of times this week, has now been "locked" to prevent further edits by posters.
www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/fayette/stories/2007/06/28/0628wiki.html
[Mod Note: email addresses removed]
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