Recently, Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, had said that nobody should trust the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia as it is run by left-leaning volunteers. He said that the site is no longer trustworthy as it does allow content that does not fit the agenda of leftists, and therefore people can’t get a complete view on the topics.
Wikipedia found itself in the middle of a controversy in India for publishing false information on cricketer Arshdeep Singh's page that linked him to the separatist Khalistani movement.
After the Indian government reacted to the vitriolic propaganda, which created a buzz on social media platforms, Wikipedia said it had removed "the wrongful edits within minutes" to correct the slanderous campaign. The ministry of IT and electronics has issued a notice to Wikipedia.
In the edited Wikipedia page on Arshdeep Singh, an unregistered user had replaced ‘India’ with ‘Khalistan’ at several places, while his name was changed to “Major Arshdeep Singh Bajwa”. The changes were corrected and reversed later by Wikipedia editors.
Wikipedia is not a source for original research and novel information. In other words, it is not a primary source. It is a secondary source. It pulls together information from other sources.
In its own words, Wikipedia says, “The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. Wikipedia carries the general disclaimer that it can be "edited by anyone at any time" and maintains an inclusion threshold of "verifiability, not truth".
For decades, the well-researched, professional encyclopedia Britannica had been an authentic source of information and was good source material for both a school essay as well as a parliamentary debate. However, with the evolution of the Internet and the expansion of information access, checks for authenticity have been compromised. In his book, The Cult of the Amateur, media commentator Andrew Keen writes: “Look at Wikipedia, the internet’s largest cathedral of knowledge. Unlike editors at a professional encyclopedia like the Britannica , the identity of the volunteer editors on Wikipedia is unknown… Wikipedia’s editors embrace and revel in the commonness of their knowledge. But as the adage goes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Because on Wikipedia, two plus two sometimes does equal five.”
The growth of open source and the spread of Web 2.0 has ensured that ‘social media’ became truly social. But no matter how democratic Web 2.0 appears, its lawless landscape leaves users exposed to all kinds of manipulations and abuses and Wikipedia is not isolated from the malaise. The Internet age has spawned the unbridled growth of the ‘hearsay’ writers masquerading as ‘journalists’ and ‘authors’ causing the spread of misinformation.
Where information is knowledge, easy access to half-baked information is misinterpreted and false knowledge is passed off as ‘acceptable’. While it is understandable that vigilance can rein in vandals, can it curtail the large-scale recording of unprofessional content that is being bartered, sold and given away free in a Wikipedia dominated sphere? People need to stop blindly trusting Wikipedia.
Internet information is free but not sacrosanct.
Pics courtesy: Internet
