I am a big fan of Wikipedia and for some reason, I chuckle everytime I read the media report about it. The old media appear to often have a negative bias towards the Internet, seeing it as a threat and a corrupter of morals. However, coverage of Wikipedia is always particularly negative.
Amazingly, The Observer deemed it newsworthy to report that Wikipedia had been edited to show Robert Kilroy-Silk (a controversial British MEP) was a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Whilst libel is definitely an issue and is wrong, most instances of blatant vandalism like this are fixed in minutes, if not seconds! That, though, doesn’t make a captivating headline or read!
Reporting on Wikipedia’s inaccuracies, libel and vandalism is old news. By now, the public should have realised that ‘WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY’ (to quote their disclaimer). It’s perfectly easy for any journalist to find lies or vandalism on Wikipedia articles through purely clicking on the ‘history’ link on the article and seeing which edits have been reverted.
I found everything from local newspapers to major national news stories criticising Wikipedia (or information within it).
I hope the media begin to move away from blaming Wikipedia and begin to blame the editors who make the misleading edits. People, children and adults, still find it amusing to vandalise articles and it seems to even be considered acceptable amongst the populace.
The beauty of the whole matter is that despite the fact the media criticise Wikipedia’s reliability, they use it for quick research and occasionally even quote it as some sort of definitive resource!
Hehe, I love this post. So true. I’m getting sick of people actually trying to make a living off of Wiki-bashing.
Besides, why hasn’t anybody noticed that most of Wikipedia’s articles quote TONS of credible sources? If you don’t trust the Wiki article itself, just check out the source! People are dumb.
By and large I’m a big supporter of wikipedia, and find the nit-picking tedious (in the main). However it is also the case that subjects of very niche interest are easily manipulated into a subjective rendering of the facts. I can think of at least two examples where the author has waged a war of attrition against those who would try and correct their version of events, and won out through sheer determination. Their version of a historical period now stands as ‘fact’, despite a massive concerted effort to correct it.
Of course, there’s always the uncyclopaedia if you really want to get your facts wrong.