DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ABOUT WIKIPEDIA

A new piece of software known as Wikiscanner, developed by the California Institute of Technology, has revealed the site to be “the province of the covert lobby” according to Sunday Times columnist Oliver Kamm.

The big bad boys of the corporate underworld, Dow Chemicals, AstraZeneca and Exxon Mobil to name but a few, may have been editing their own entries to show themselves in a more flattering light.

AstraZeneca have deleted references to the suicidal side-effects of its anti-depressant Seroquel, Exxon Mobil has altered passages explaining their failure to pay more than $5 billion dollars (US) in compensation to Alaskan fishermen affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill and Dow Chemicals have mysteriously deleted a paragraph referring to the Bohpal chemical disaster of 1984.

Perhaps more worryingly the CIA has also been at it - reportedly guilty of inserting “Wyaaaah!” after every mention of the Iranian President.

The cynicism is astounding; it’s akin to scribbling on the Dead Sea Scrolls and changing Jesus’s name to Kevin.

Have columnists such as Kamm who believes we should “jeer at its (Wikipedia’s) pretensions“, in their haste to condemn Wikipedia, somewhat missed the point of the website itself.

What’s your view on the Wikipedia issue? An unbiased opinion based on a careful summation of both sides of the story no doubt. A considered viewpoint that takes into account all available information and concludes with an original insight. Honestly?

Or have you been spouting something you read elsewhere? Perhaps even from Wikipedia itself. Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia, claims to love Wikiscanner saying it “brings an additional level of transparency to what’s going on at Wikipedia”. This despite the fact that it has brought to the fore Wikipedia’s main frailty - namely that is completely unchecked and can be edited by anybody. Wales, though, has been quoted as saying that it is only through transparency that Wikipedia will achieve quality.

Recent moves by Wikipedia have served to improve the reliability of information on the site. Although it is only in a trial format, the new software that only allows trusted editors to immediately edit Wikipedia pages will certainly help matters. A user can become a trusted editor by submitting suggestions for changes to articles to other trusted editors. Once a user has posted enough reliable entries they will gain the status of trusted editor. If too many of their entries from here on in are disputed they lose their status. This system is tied closely to the ethics of traditional journalism and should quieten the doubters.

The success of Wikipedia seems bound up with a very modern definition of truth; an epistemology of consensus rather than hard facts. The pursuit of knowledge has never taken a straight path, its history is littered with avenues of thought that led nowhere, wrong turns and journeys no doubt of ingenious imbecility. We remember the path that went forward, the Galileo’s and the Einstein’s but we forget those who for one reason or another decided to postulate that the Earth was a cube or that light travelled on wheels. Wikipedia works on this principle, if enough people edit an article it will eventually become accurate. Until now the process has been vulnerable to information sharks such as Exxon but those corporations that have been caught with their online pants down this week will certainly think twice about doctoring their entries from now on.

Kamm’s and the rest of the traditional media’s criticisms of Wikipedia seem to harbour a certain paranoia. They seem to dislike the public’s trust of this young pretender, who is potentially ousting them from their seat of arbiters of all relevant information. The criticism they lay at the feet of Wikipedia, that it is nothing more than a bunch of amateurish opinions, is rather ironic as it is an accusation that could be leveled at many newspapers or television stations in the world. Across the board it seems that comment and opinion is taking the place of good honest reportage.

From bolshy, one-sided television journalists, the rants of tabloid newspapers and the increasingly large comments sections of the broadsheets to the rampant parturition of websites such as You Tube that allow even those of us who don’t have a column in the Herald to voice our opinion, unbiased news coverage is a Sleeping Beauty awaiting its kiss.

Whatever happened to surveying the facts and coming up with our own thoughts? It seems certain that there is a complete distrust of statistics et al and this is not surprising seeing as our governments and some sections of our media couldn’t be trusted with a plastic spoon let alone a dossier of war secrets or a DNA database. One almost had pity on Tony Blair when he childishly cried out about the media being a feral beast. The Prime Minister should be big and ugly enough to take the criticism, the satire and the downright dumb spat at him from various media sources, but he does have a point when it comes to the sensationalization of the media.

No longer can we have the story “Cat Rescued By Fireman From Tree” it must be “Terrorist Cat in Daring Rescue Mission By Underpaid Fireman in Tree Funded By The National Lottery - Where Will It End!”

Perhaps journalists are bored. The less discriminate of us seem to fire off ill informed opinions like a senile major with a blunderbuss. Maybe we just can’t face the mundanity of the world we live in and try to exaggerate. This doesn’t seem to add up though - the current world, whether
you like it or not is a very exciting place to live, as long as you don’t necessarily combine exciting with pleasurable. It seems more likely to be the product of our beloved market forces pushing their noses in where they are not needed. What sells newspapers or advertising space? Scandal and gossip. With a media that is all outraged bark and corporate muzzle this won’t change unless we stop falling for it.

The irony of the traditional media sneering at Wikipedia’s shortcomings is blindingly evident. However, Wikipedia must embrace the ethics of traditional journalism if it is to achieve its aim of becoming a reliable source of information. Using the trusted editors system is a good step in the right direction.

Rather than jeering at Wikipedia’s pretensions - I shall be sticking my tongue out at the pretensions of Kamm and his cronies. A brief trawl through Wikipedia reveals the slightly anal nature of the average poster and the lengths that most posters go to reference their articles, lengths that reveal a passion for honesty that escapes companies such as Exxon. Wikipedia must aspire to a higher set of ethics than corporations; at the same time though, as a uniquely democratic arbiter of information it must be allowed to thrive.