Wikipedia's challenges

NEW YORK - The death of former Enron chief Ken Lay yesterday underscores the challenges facing online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, which as the news was breaking offered many causes for his death.

Lay, 64, died of an apparent heart attack, according to a pastor at the Lay family's church in Houston. It was six weeks after a jury found him guilty of fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in US history. A family spokeswoman said Lay died early on Wednesday morning in Aspen.

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, added news of Lay's death to his online biography shortly after news outlets began reporting it at around 10am (2am Thursday NZ time).

At 10.06am, Wikipedia's entry for Lay said he died "of an apparent suicide".

At 10.08am, it said he died at his Aspen, Colorado home "of an apparent [heart attack] or [suicide]". Within the same minute, it said the cause of death was "yet to be determined".

At 10.09am, it said "no further details have been officially released" about the death. Two minutes later, it said: "The guilt of ruining so many lives finally (sic) led him to his suicide."

At 10.12am, this was replaced by: "According to Lay's pastor the cause was a 'massive coronary' heart attack."

By 10.39am, Lay's entry said: "Speculation as to the cause of the heart attack lead many people to believe it was due to the amount of stress put on him by the Enron trial." This statement was later dropped.

- REUTERS