Cutting Wikipedia a little slack
Whether scrambling to find last-minute information for term papers or satisfying some obscure curiosity about pop-culture, most college students have already discovered the web-based encyclopedia Wikipedia as a potential source for information.
Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia, with its collection of over 2 million articles available for free over the Internet, has established a considerable presence within the electronic community. Most Google searches almost always match a Wikipedia link to the searched item, which is suggestive of how prevalent the site has become.
What separates Wikipedia from other encyclopedias is that it allows any registered user to create and edit content on the site. It is primarily this feature that, despite its novelty, has resulted in a number of criticisms from potential users concerning the reliability of the site’s information. Without the benefit of some kind of authoritative check, how can the information be trusted? This concern is a valid one of course because there is no mechanism that guarantees the truth of the site’s content. However, even though this criticism is a good one, it is not necessarily fatal to the site.
In my view, Wikipedia exposes a very interesting question about the relationship between information and its consumers. While it is true that consumers of information desire accuracy from their informational sources, to what extent should the consumer himself be responsible for choosing his information wisely?
The average person acquires his information from a myriad of sources throughout his life and it is questionable how many of those sources are actually reliable. For example, people often believe what their family members and friends tell them without going through the trouble of verifying what was said by some rigorous means. This consequently runs the risk of their being misinformed. In these cases, it is expected that the consumer of the information be shrewd enough to hold their beliefs tentatively. However, when authoritative sources are involved, like large news corporations or prestigious publishers for example, should the level of scrutiny on the part of the consumer be allowed to diminish? Are authoritative sources of information reliable enough to render consumer scrutiny unnecessary? I think the answer here is no.
Even though many individuals and organizations go to great lengths to verify the information they present, there is always a chance of error or bias present that can contaminate the quality of the information. Sometimes the contamination is slight and insignificant, but sometimes it can be quite extreme. As an illustration of the latter, consider the behavior of the Bush administration over the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This was an instance where an authoritative body presented misleading information to the public over a matter of incredible importance. Despite the number of prestigious organizations monitoring the actions of the executive branch, the dubious information nevertheless reached the public and generated support for the administration’s cause. It is in cases such as these that scrutiny over informational sources is most needed.
The greatest danger for consumers of information is the assumption that a source of information can be foolproof. It is in these instances that consumers let their guard down and risk investing too much faith in the prestige and authority of the source. Wikipedia does an interesting service for the consumers of information—it reminds them that the merits of a piece of factual information should always be taken with a grain of salt. This is not say that every source of information is as good as any other, but is to suggest is that the responsibility of information consumption belongs at least as much, if not more so, to the consumer himself as it does the source. The fact that Wikipedia candidly publicizes its potential inaccuracies warrants a high degree of skepticism over the site’s information, but it also reminds us that the same amount of skepticism (maybe more) is warranted for those authoritative sources that claim infallibility.