Wiki-plead-ia

From TIME
Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?
Monday, Sep. 28, 2009

We should still have a lot of faith in the power of Wikipedia, yet this article from TIME should make us step back and start pondering how Wiki has impacted our life.

There is no doubt that Wikipedia is one of the most informative tools since the emergence of Internet. Yet when people are enjoying the wealth of knowledge they have gained from Wiki, they need to appreciate the notion that the ‘authors’ of Wikipedia are merely volunteers, not necessarily people working in the respective fields – no offense. True, there are proofreading mechanisms taking place through the pages, but given that you have a decent knowledge of a certain field, you will never believe how easy you can spot out inaccuracies in any of the pages. Indeed, I feel that Wikipedia is best used as a tool to facilitate one’s learning process - serving as a ‘starting point’ for further information research. Indeed the most useful part of a Wiki page is often its reference section, as that gives us a lot of sane by pointing to sources which have a stronger potential to be accurate (e.g. a key web page or a good journal article). We have heard too many of this inside jokes where students research on the Wikipedia pages to write essays, and those who cite Wikipedia as a sort of reference will be clearly discredited by any educated individual. It is a weird thing - but some people seem to have the assumption that they will be labeled as ‘hip’ by referencing sources in Wikipedia. The irony is here – since the advancement of Internet, people seem to be a bit out of league with their critical thinking skills.

Wikipedia has often misused as a platform for insidious defamatory purposes. Certain types of pages, such as those about politics, living people and sensitive issues are infamous for their opinioned content and inaccuracies.

Wikipedia represents part of the establishment of the Internet Age. We are all helping to shape its future, and with luck, it should serve as a reliable and precious information mine for all of us.

by Ed Law ^o^ 27/9/2009