R U Wiki-picky? Meg’s comment….Loaded Aug 5th 2010
Posted by Meg Daintith
Do you believe what you read on Wikipedia?
In fact, SHOULD we believe Wikipedia? Is user-generated content ever truly acceptable as a primary source of factual information?
The conclusion here is that of course if it’s correct then it is acceptable, and if it’s incorrect then it isn’t. The issue is, how do we know?
Logically we can build a picture of the facts by collecting information from a number of sources and aggregating it ourselves. We can use TV, magazines, our friends, the net etc – oh and books of course. A little bit like we would on Trip Advisor – there’s always one unhappy customer, so we take extreme views on balance with others.
But humans are often more lazy. If I read something I didn’t know about on Wikipedia then I stop right there and believe it – don’t you?
As the path of least resistance in the gathering of information, could we end up believing any old yarn spun out from our computer screen? And how dangerous is this? Could this some day be harnessed in to the propagation of more sinister messages that are socially divisive and politically or morally questionable? This may sound far fetched but don’t underestimate the power of the media – it wouldn’t be the first time in history communications have been misused.
I would like to suggest that it is healthy to question even ‘expert’ content in the same way we should user generated content. After all, within most communities of experts there is rarely agreement over the most critical questions raised by their subject. If we read expert information, we still gain only that point of view.
More than this however, whereas Wikipedia is potentially vulnerable to unscrupulous individuals writing the wrong thing, wider media houses, or expert organizations are surely vulnerable to unscrupulous output on a corporation-sized scale.
Wiki may not be perfectly correct, but based on the sheer number of contributors at the same time reduces likelihood for total accuracy, but provides safety that in numbers that no one agency can gain control
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