Coach Thrasher
Death by Wikipedia? NOT!
There's an article in Sunday's Washington Post panning Wikipedia as a source for news. I was quite surprised at the author's comments on his expectations of Wikipedia as a news source for information on the death of Enron's Ken Lay.
The author closes with "I'm a fan of Wikipedia and Wiki notions, such as "citizen journalism." I just want them to be better." But he pans wiki pretty badly. I think he has missed the point of what wiki wants to be. Because Wikipedia has tried to market itself as "like the encyclopedia" the author expects the same experience with fact-checked articles, etc.
In reality, Wikipedia has used the encyclopedia analogy to educate users about what kind of content it has to offer. The fact that users can add/edit content at will throws a novel wrench into the mix that people are still learning to deal with. It's not the same as an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia analogy educates users as to what it does though.
IMHO it's much better than the encyclopedia. People can democratically change the content. Of course, content will be changed to suit the times! That adds value to the whole Wiki process! The examples of updating the Ken Lay content, flipping from "suicide" to "natural heart attack" and back within minutes, only goes to show that people have the power to change the content rapidly. Once the consensus is reached on what the facts are, it will be updated. And THAT is the beauty of the system. The Encyclopedia Britannica isn't nearly as dynamic: errors live forever in each edition. As it was, Wikipedia was not the right source for information on the cause of Ken Lay's death in the first place... to assume so is to use Wikipedia incorrectly.
Thinking in terms of systems workflow the WP author, Frank Ahrens, may want to use a workflow system to "vote up" wiki content that has been fact checked and is ready for world-wide distribution. Maybe wiki could be the seeding grounds for new content, and a fact-checking system based on user's consensus (like voting) would percolate "fact" type wiki postings to a Wikifact.com holding location. Only fact-checked, or consensus-driven, content would be promoted to Wikifact. That way the fact-driven content would be used and marketed as, well fact, and the wiki content would retain it's organic-information growth that keeps it strong. The Slashdot news voting system could be used to promote content from Wikipedia to Wikifact. Humm.... startup?
Posted at 11:45AM Jul 10, 2006 by jason in General | Comments[0]