So Wikipedia has been in the news a lot the past few days following John Seigenthaler’s USA Today column, and the Times has even warned its reporters against using it “to check any information that goes into the newspaper.”
I use Wikipedia a lot. An awful lot. To check information that goes into my paper. In the last few days I’ve used it to refresh my knowledge of the Natalee Holloway case and to brush up on John Lennon and Yoko Ono, for instance.
(And at least once, I’ve cited it as a source, although I forget why and can’t find the article on Nexis.)
NYT business editor Larry Ingrassia suggests it shouldn’t be trusted because one of his reporters has received email messages about various inaccuracies in the free online encyclopedia. To me, that’s a bit like suggesting the Times is unreliable because of the fabrications of Jayson Blair, or because in 2003 it printed a the obituary of a woman who wasn’t really dead — while ignoring the great journalism the paper produces on a daily basis. You have to judge a institution on more than its mistakes.
I place some trust in Wikipedia. I don’t think it yet has the same credibility as, say, the country’s best papers — but it’s certainly worth consulting. Check out this article on the Congressional Medal of Honor, this one on the Canadian Pacific Railway, or this one on the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Or use this link to find an article at random. I think the breadth and depth of the information you can find on Wikipedia is pretty amazing. (How about this list of fictional chemical elements, like phostlite?)
I might not rely on Wikipedia for a story on, say, John Kerry … but I would if I had to explain what an alpaca is. (And I wouldn’t be alone: one of our sportswriters did this just the other day, in a story about the Mets’ new alpaca-raising firebrand pitcher Billy Wagner)
Seigenthaler doesn’t seem to recognize any of this. His op-ed is all, “me me me.” You’d never get the sense that the Internet is this amazing communications tool that people are still just beginning to take advantage of.
“And so we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research — but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects,” he writes. “Congress has enabled them and protects them.”
He’s refering to the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which states that online service providers can’t be sued for what their users write.
Well, John: what’s the alternative? Do you really want every message-board, chat room and blog comment-section to be overrun by bureaucracy, where only lawyer-approved messages can be written?
Sure, your character assassin got away. Isn’t that the price we pay to live in a society where you aren’t constantly monitored and surveilled, that people get away with stuff?
I think people don’t really understand Wikipedia and the fact that it is open source. I was doing a bond issuance and one of the bankers wanted to put a reference to a Wikipedia article on iron ore manufacturing into the offering document. He wanted to direct investors to wikipedia to learn more about the process. I pointed out that the articles could be changed by anyone and so he was suggesting selling securities with a statement that could say absolutely anything. I actually logged onto the site and changed the link around a bit for the fun of it to show the banker what could be done. I put something like “Iron ore mining is really cool and makes lots and lots of money for people” at the end of the article. Something that would get you in trouble with the SEC if you actually marketed a security like that. (I put the article back the way I found it after I had my fun.) No one should really trust this site with anything that is mission criticle. But it is helpful for quick reference, especially about modern cultural stuff (e.g., spaghetti monsters).
If you want to link to a specific Wikipedia article, there is actually a way to do it safely … if you go under the “history” tab you can find the current and past versions of a Wikipedia article. For example, this is the Dec. 7 article on Flying Spaghetti Monsters. That link works, even though someone changed around the article today.
Technically, all “open source” means is that the software source code is freely available. Wikipedia is open source; so is WordPress (the software this blog runs on) and a lot of other software. Theoretically open source software is going to be better because any Joe Schmo can look at the code and inspect it for errors. Wikipedia is also a “wiki,” meaning anyone can edit it. A lot of people find that terrifying … you wouldn’t expect it to work. But I think it does, at least reasonably well. There’s a lot of ideas that you just have to put into practice to see if they work …
You may have heard that this was a result of a practical joke by now.
A political activist wrote an article about the American calling it “fascist.” Unfortunately, it was badly sourced and inaccurate.
Wikipedia & the American Legion
A good example of how anybody with an agenda can write an article.