woodenspoon

In this week’s edition of Time under the title Look Who's Using Wikipedia, Bill Tancer discusses Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” He argues its strength is the quantity of information which it makes available on the Internet. The weakness is the lack of vetting for accuracy and the increasing trend to find deliberately incorrect and even libellous material.

My view is that people tend to believe what they read. They understand that it might not always be accurate but this is due to oversight rather than a deliberate manipulation of the facts. Until recently most information was disseminated by newspapers. Reputation and the libel laws ensure reasonable accuracy. Nowadays the public gets most of its information from the Internet where there is much less control of accuracy.

Wikipedia has become the No.1 external site visited using Google and people assume that it has the same validity as Encyclopaedia Britannica which has a reputation for accuracy based on hundreds of years of academic research. Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica are like chalk and cheese but the users do not realise this. Therein lies the danger and the opportunity to mislead and manipulate the public’s views and beliefs.

I must admit how tempting it is to use Wikipedia as a shortcut to gather information. But as a novice journalist, I realise that my profession is a provider of information and we need to research the truth and cannot rely on sources such as Wikipedia.

We are living in an era where too much inaccurate information is easily available. "Seeing is believing" might not be a useful guideline anymore.