The free online encyclopedia WikiPedia has been dealing with a serious issue lately -- credibility. WikiPedia, the grand scale intellectual Internet experiment, seeks to build community by sharing the world's knowledge through collaborative. Unfortunately, some people don't play well in the sandbox with others. In its present configuration, WikiPedia has allowed people to post material anonymously to the site. In this case, knowledge is more often relative than factual. Reputation turns out to be a big deal for web sources.
Anyone with access to the Internet and expertise in a particular area can contribute reference material to the site, or after a posting is uploaded, edit the material.
This practice is now brewing up some unwanted media attention for the reference giant.
The troubles for WikiPedia started months ago, when John Seigenthaler, a former administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy in the 1960s, had false biographical material published about him. After nearly four months of complaints, WikiPedia finally removed the inaccurate material.
Seigenthaler, in an article for USA today, argues:
My "biography" was posted May 26. On May 29, one of Wales' [WikiPedia's founder] volunteers "edited" it only by correcting the misspelling of the word "early." For four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin before Wales erased it from his website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks.
The character assassination of Seigenthaler could and should have been avoided through fact-checking and editing -- two essential components of the writing process.
Should the people responsible for posting erroneous or malicious information on the site be held accountable for their actions? One would hope so, but that isn't always the case on the Internet.
Wikipedia's lethargic response to Seigentahler's concerns is an unfortunate reality of our Internet age.
Wikipedia's popularity as a reference source for millions of online users is unprecedented and perhaps may be justification for its parsimonious tight-fisted dealings with this issue. Perhaps success does breed hubris, despite all the good intentions behind an idea.
In a perfect world Wikipedia epitomizes the collaborative learning/knowledge community of the future.
However, allowing a free flow of "hit-or-miss" fact checking by volunteers is risky business.
Today, I discovered, embarrassingly, the malicious side of WikiPedia's lack of content management, or, in other words, its "anyone can be an editor" policy.
This afternoon, I had the opportunity to talk about technology and teaching to a group of educators and administrators at Southern Oregon's University's Extended Campus Program. I had been looking forward to talking about how I use the Internet in my teaching and spoke about all sort of things including, blogging, Internet learning, podcasting, furling, as well as using wikis as a reference resource. Everything went great until I got to the Wiki part.
Generally, I do not go online to demonstrate a particular feature of the Internet. I usually prepare my presentations, consisting mostly of screen grabs from the sites I use in my teaching and research. Today, however, I took a chance, which may have been a mistake depending upon your perspective on what happened next.
After talking a little about Wikipedia's credibility issue and the Seignethaler situation, I went online and clicked on a link to a featured article at the top of the homepage. The article was a biography about the actress KaDee Strickland. As I talked and navigated through the site I innocently clicked on Strickland's name in the featured column. What appeared in front of us -- on the big screen -- was not the actress. What came up on the screen was a close up image of a significant part of the male reproduction system.
I quickly tried to navigate away from the image of the male genital looming there on the screen, but fumbled with the technology. For a brief second the picture popped up again [insert the sounds of an exasperating sigh and a lot of giggling from the audience here].
Talk about a definitive teaching/learning moment. I am sure my audience will have quite a time forgetting about Wikipedia for a while, or maybe even think long about using it as a reference tool in class.
Interestingly, I couldn't help but notice that shortly after my discovery, the featured posting on Kadee Strickland was replaced by an article about shoe polish. Could this be a coincidence or a cover-up for the mistake?
Can WikiPedia ultimately be trusted as a reference resource?
Time will time, but at this moment, I have some serious doubts.