Rantings of a New Yorker

We’ve all used it. Some love it. Some hate it. We know that Wikipedia has a wealth of information but, there are inherent dangers in relying on accurate information on a website that allows its users to edit that information. Many college professors forbid their students from using it precisely because there have been too many errors in submissions and spam vandals continue to flood the site.

The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, admitted in 2005 that there are online quality issues, many of which still need to be resolved. Two main issues with Wikipedia remain the garbled mess that passes as facts on the site and that it is difficult to check every little detail.

Those who favor Wikipedia say that if you see something wrong, then edit it yourself. This merely puts the responsibility onto you to make sure items are correct. This disregards the fact that you came to Wikipedia in the first place to verify the accuracy of something you heard or to learn something new.

Wikipedians also point to the few errors in Encyclopedia Britannica, claiming that paper versions of encyclopedias aren’t always correct either. First, Encyclopedia Britannica has only a handful of errors, all of which have been corrected in their online version. Second, putting the attention on someone else’s mistakes is no way to claim that your are better. Wikipedia continues to be full of badly written prose, factual errors, and endless apologies for the errors that needed to be fixed.

Also, claiming that Wikipedia is faster than the alternatives doesn’t make it accurate. It is merely saying, “use us, we’re faster” and does not touch on the numerous problems their site faces.

There is also the issue of the quality of submissions, even when they are 100% accurate.

As a delicious illustration, Wikipedia appears to have a quality problem with the word “quality” itself. While Merriam Webster online offers us eight major definitions, including “a) degree of excellence : GRADE … b : superiority in kind”, and the Cambridge Dictionary three, of which two are “how good or bad something is and of a high standard” Wikipedia’s sister project Wiktionary definition begins this. “1 – (uncountable) general good value”

Is it acceptable to only have one definition for the quality? Shouldn’t it have more definitions? Why is this considered acceptable on Wikipedia?

More arguments are listed over the submissions of Bill Gates and Jane Fonda. In February, 2006, the Times Online wrote a piece about saboteurs who stalk Wikipedia, sometimes making daily changes over and over again to the same articles. John Seigenthaler found his biography entry to be riddled with mistakes that he described as “false and malicious” in 2005. The most recent problem that I have come across was Barack Obama‘s entry.

Then we have the issue of paying for the “correction” of entries on Wikipedia. Microsoft tried to hire people to adjust entries. Wikipedia has also begun a policy of tagging all external links on its site as “nofollow,” rendering those links invisible to search engines. It is still unclear if this is a positive or a negative. There is also problems with admin and how they manage to keep their positions.

Wikipedia is an enormous undertaking and it strives to be the reference on the web but it has to work harder at creating content that is easy to read, understandable, and correct. You will probably never be able to use information from Wikipedia for your college papers or PhD. thesis precisely because there is no way of telling from one moment to the next whether or not the information is accurate. Colleges rarely allow you to quote from any type of encyclopedia because the information contained in it is also short and general. If you are looking for more detail, Wikipedia is not the place to go. However, it is a great quick and dirty tool for people who just need to know a few simple things and use it as a jumping off point for more detailed, referenced, and fact-checked material.