NEWS

Editorial: Weird, wild world of Wikipedia

Staff Writer
Waynesboro Record Herald

Since its debut six years ago, Wikipedia.org has become one of the world's most popular Web sites. The online encyclopedia boasts more than 5 million entries on topics from the Aachen Cathedral to ZZ Top. Students, professionals, even journalists use it for research.

But is Wikipedia reliable?

Unlike the Encyclopedia Britannica set gathering dust in your garage, Wikipedia's entries are written not by a board of experts but by the anonymous masses. Most anyone with Internet access and free time can edit, change or add to the information contained therein. In allowing this, Wikipedia's founders theorized that a collective truth would emerge.

That's an enthralling concept, but recent news accounts have revealed how some users have altered entries to cast themselves, their products or their allies in a better light. The list of alleged tweakers includes government bodies (the CIA, the Australian prime minister's office), corporations (PepsiCo, Diebold, ExxonMobil) and even the Vatican.

The Wikipedia narrative is compelling for a couple reasons. First, the site's existence brings up an interesting question: Which “truth” is more true - a static one created and controlled by a few, or a fluid one created and controlled by everyone? We're not sure, but one would hope that whoever's writing and/or rewriting history has some expertise to do so.

That leads to a second matter: the accuracy of information on the Internet. In a digital age in which anyone with Web access can post anything they want, what information can we trust? Or, as Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert might ask, what is “truth” and what is merely “truthiness”? Colbert, incidentally, tried to prove how malleable online “truths” are: The host once asked his audience to alter Wikipedia entries on endangered elephants. The online encyclopedia has since digitally locked its elephant page to thwart pranksters.

Indeed, truth and fact as we know them are imperiled by a host of factors found online: personal agendas, blatant inaccuracies and flat-out fabrications.

Other media aren't perfect, either, but the Internet, still an emerging form, has a long way to go in that regard. A step toward accountability is the Wikiscanner - an online database that tracks who's changing Wikipedia entries. (For instance, according to the Wikiscanner, someone at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has been editing entries on Pat Robertson and “The Godfather.” Good to know.)

Journalists have long lived by this motto: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Savvy consumers of modern media should follow this advice: If you read it on the Internet, check it out.

Peoria Journal Star
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