You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Wikipedia is Crazy. At least the way it is set up now.
The premise is cool. It’s an on line encyclopedia that allows anyone to access information. History. Current Events. People; alive and dead.
More times than not, you GOOGLE a topic, and the first heading for that topic is a Wikipedia entry.
I never choose this option.
It may be the first offering, but it’s my last choice.
I’d rather get a cold sore than rely on a Wikipedia entry. Why?
Because Wikipedia is not reliable.
Like they say; too many cooks spoil the broth.
That’s Wikipedia’s problem. Anybody with an internet connection and a pulse can log onto the site and alter the informational content.
The philosophy is more is better. Sometimes less is more.
When I was growing up we had a leather bound collection of Encyclopedia Britannica. This was decades before the internet.
This collection of hard cover reference books was my life line when it came time to write a term paper.
Geography : It was filed with maps.
History: there were color illustrations and lots of dates.
Wars: so many you needed an encyclopedia to keep them all straight.
The beautiful thing about the Encyclopedia Britannica; I trusted it. When I opened it up to the Brazilian Rain Forest, facts about indigenous species and the Yanamamo Indians jumped off the page. The information was never in question. I never once opened the chapter Ben Franklin and saw a bunch of hand written notes in the margin. Ben Franklin wore crotchless panties. Ben Franklin dated a donkey. There were no entries like this.
Sabotaging the old encyclopedia was not possible. It might have contained some incorrect facts, but none of them placed their purposely.
The days of paper bound encyclopedias are gone.
Long live cyber space.
The internet is transparent. Anyone with a pass word and the will to be something bigger than themselves can access Wikipedia.
Once you enter this cyber bastion of information, there are two roads they can travel. One of truth. One of deception.
Wikipedia is based on the honor system. The idea is people who have real knowledge of a topic will add that information and make the topic current and complete.
That can be a wonderful thing. Soldiers who really braved the atrocities of the Korean War can write about what it was like. The cold. The anguish. Life in the fox holes. It is a first hand account of history, because these are the real life historians writing about it. Can you imagine if the guy rowing George Washington across the Delaware River on Christmas Day 1776 could have entered his thoughts on Wikipedia.
“Sit down George. I can’t see where I’m going.”
You don’t get that in paper bound text books do you?
But like anything else, Wikipedia is people driven, and sadly, people are flawed. And because people are flawed, Wikipedia is flawed. Wikipedia trusts people and some people cannot be trusted.
A girl at a Nashville swim meet was lamenting the other day how she failed a school paper she had written. The other swim moms asked, how she could mess up the topic so badly?
The 14 year old girl said she got her information from Wikipedia.
The women who were carrying PDA’s and iPhones Googled the same topic the girl had told them about. They rolled their eyes that the girl wrote what she wrote based on what she thought was a reliable source.
They showed the girl the real information from the reputable source. She cried.
The girl didn’t know that she had been had by a bunch of mischievous morons who are hiding in the thick grass of the internet.
I wrote today’s story based on a story I read in my local paper. The headline: WIKIPEDIA TIGHTENS EDITING.
What does that mean? The AP reports that the site is trying to impose “more discipline” with new restrictions on the editing of articles. The article says this change comes as Wikipedia tries to balance credibility versus openness.
“While anyone can still edit entries, the site is testing pages that require changes to be approved by an experienced Wikipedia editor before they show up on the site,” the AP reports.
Tighter editing would have been a plus when someone purposely posted the premature deaths of Senators Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy. Ironically, the day this article was published in my newspaper is the same day that Senator Edward Kennedy died, for real.
Stupid Joke, or was the Wikipedia prankster just prescient.
So the fact that they are trying to make this web site trustworthy is laudable.
I don’t think that it can be done, till they shut out the public entirely. You need a bunch of pocket protection wearing library types who have a thirst for this sort of thing. Checking minutia and such.
The whole issue made me think about some Wikipedia stories you should never see, but still could:
Germans bomb Pearl Harbor.
Superman: thespian named Sam who likes to wear blue stretch pants with his initial on his chest.
Adolph Hitler: enjoyed sex with goats.
So here’s what I say about Wikipedia.
The idea is wonderful. But until you figure out how to execute the plan, I think it is better to limit the number of people who have access to history.
After all, if we don’t learn from history, we are destined to repeat it.
And I for one do not want a history where the father of electricity also had a romantic fling with a mule.