Wikipedia: A Good Change or A Bad Move?
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The online reception of free-encyclopedia Wikipedia is incredibly mixed. There are different people which use it for different reasons in different ways. Of course, Wikipedia can be edited by absolutely anybody. Some people will go to Wikipedia, research content and then check it with other sources. Others will stupidly go to Wikipedia, research content and, despite knowing that this information could be totally false and uncited, they don’t bother to research with other sources. And then there are the people will avoid using Wikipedia all together.
The latter party accept that Wikipedia’s content can be propaganda and a bad source for information. This, combined with the fact that Wikipedia could be held for libel law cases if providing incorrect information, is why I believe Wikipedia is making a massive change to the way it operates its website. I’ve blogged about Wikipedia losing its novelty before with this move, but now that this operation is going to be rolled out “within the next couple of weeks”, I think it’ll be interesting to what other people think about it.
Wikipedia is going to prevent new or little-known users from editing articles about human beings and some companies and charities, with their alternations going live instantly. These alternations would have to be reviewed by an editor before they would make it to the site, reducing the chances of libel cases and reducing the amount of unreliable and unsourced information that is published on the site.
Will Wikipedia indeed lose its novelty of “anyone can edit”. Of course, some articles are locked to some users when they are little-known anyway, so will it make a difference? You must look over all points: the good news is that the articles on Wikipedia about human beings and companies are likely to contain information which you can trust, but the bad news is that Wikipedia is losing a part of what makes it the site it is and makes it so popular.
Wikipedia say that 80% of 259 English users questioned whether or not the move should go ahead agreed that it was a good idea. The operation has went ahead on the German Wikipedia for over a year now, so is it really as bad as some people think? I would, personally, never trust Wikipedia as a sole source of information for research even when this move goes ahead - it’s no guarantee for me. The trial will last two months.
I think that it will both benefit and damage Wikipedia. It may draw new users in with its increased reliability, but it may take away its novelty, and upset some users who love the site the way it is. Will you trust Wikipedia more after this move? Would you prefer Wikipedia to stay the same? If you don’t use Wikipedia, would this move help you to start relying on it? What are your views on this change? Let us know, in a comment.
2 Comments
Bob Butler
August 26th, 2009
at 12:41pm
Right problem, wrong solution. This is a step backward for Wikipedia that brings together the worst of the old and new approaches to publishing… gate keeping by off-the-record anonymous editors.
The next step forward for Wikipedia-inspired knowledge sharing websites is a fully transparent system where all contributors and editors are identity verified and all content is reviewed on-the-record by peer moderators.
However, identity verification has direct out of pocket costs difficult to sustain with Wikipedia’s voluntary contribution’s model. Also, the technology to create a fair, balanced, and fully on-the-record peer moderation system is significant (at BestThinking.com we have been working for years on these technologies on our knowledge sharing site and we know first hand it’s a big technology leap).
Therefore, Wikipedia’s choice to step back from one of their most fundamental tenets may simply be an expedient quick fix and their only real choice given their technology and business model.
- Bob
Sumit
November 19th, 2009
at 11:08pm
Forget about Wikipedia. Internet in itself is losing the old charm and there are a lot of internet companies biting dust, including Yahoo!. Google has managed to keep the interest alive with new apps and buzz about new exciting things coming. But for how long? How long has it been that any company has come out with any killer app that generates a lot of excitement. The last was Gmail I suppose. But even email has lost the charm. Social networking, Orkut, Facebook created excitement initially, but I am sure the novelty has worn out. There are too many now, and their’s a glut.
Photosharing, filesharing, music sharing etc. are also loosing the initial excitement they generated.
My take on it is that internet will finally be used to really imoprtant tasks like searching for information for research, shopping for goods that are not available locally (even this will be limited as there are cases where you do not get what you see on the site). Online banking is risky and there have been cases of massive frauds.
The buzz nowadays seems to be integrating mobile and PC, MobilePC if I may say so. But it will eventually meet the same fate.
But of course, businesses love to create hype and excitement, and ride the wave where they make in a quick moolah without the thought of coming with longlasting products like a radio, music system, phone or a refrigerator.
Mantra seems to be come out with a novelty, create a hype and a wave, make money and start to look at what next wave to create.
Just wake up folks. Come up with something concrete.