Wikipedia is Only as Good as its Authors
Wikipedia is a sprawling, cavernous wellspring of information, both good and bad. When I think of good or bad on Wikipedia, I tend to think in terms of slight bias versus heavy bias. That leads us to the question: who writes/edits Wikipedia articles? A massive range of random internet figures, or a tiny group of dedicated fact-checkers? The answer is ever-changing.
Wikipedia has always been a source of questionable integrity because of the grounds that the site was founded on — ideally, anyone may edit any article so as to increase knowledge on a subject for the common good. Yet as is often the case, online pranksters and angry netizens alike make their mark on Wikipedia pages that devalue the validity of the information that existed there before. Take, for example, the Wikipedia page on pathological lying, which fell prey to unhelpful editors. Mashable’s Colin Daileda reported that Google searches for “pathological lying” that linked to the term’s Wikipedia page briefly displayed former Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s picture before “moderators quickly reverted the page back to normal and then locked it on account of ‘persistent vandalism.’”
The would-be editors of Wikipedia don’t just play the politics game either. Dissatisfied fans of the NFL Franchise San Francisco 49ers took to Wikipedia to express their disgust with the team’s General Manager, Trent Baalke. SFGate’s Katie Dowd documented some of the (frankly hilarious) edits to Baalke’s page, which exemplify the downside of Wikipedia: “the page’s edit history shows dozens of changes since early October, including one that lists his position with the 49ers as ‘Professional Team Destroyer’ and another as ‘Total Joke.’” No one can stop 49ers fans from hating Baalke or the masses from having access to edit Wikipedia, so we must look to the brighter forces — the site’s vigilante editors — for inspiration.
While you may be quick to take these examples of devious editing as further evidence to dismiss Wikipedia, I implore you to look to the site’s positives. Indeed, the antiquated adage about Wikipedia that, while its scope and size are awesome, its information cannot be trusted for citation on an academic level, is gradually changing. Last year, Melissa Rodman of the Harvard Crimson detailed Wikipedia’s changing impact on perhaps the most prestigious university in America: “instead of term papers, the groups learn about writing copy, navigating fair use policies, and producing bias-neutral content, either by creating new Wikipedia pages or by taking Wikipedia stubs and revamping them.” Obviously, this exercise in a Harvard course called “History and Literature 90g: ‘Charlemagne: Histories, Stories, Myths’” is not the standard practice in college classrooms; but it does represent changing attitudes about Wikipedia because of better authorship and thus better information!
Reliable, unbiased writing and editing will make Wikipedia the bastion of infallible knowledge — the veritable online encyclopedia — that the site’s founders desired it to be. In an interview with Quartz, Wikimedia’s Juliet Barbara attests to the importance of unbiased Wikipedia authorship, stating that “when you have that space of discourse, people who are dedicated to knowledge will come to more balanced perspectives over time.” Although anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, it’s the magnanimous fact-checkers of the site that maintain and improve it on a daily basis. Poynter’s Alexios Mantzarlis described the efforts of groups like Lupa (Brazil) and Full Fact (United Kingdom) to host “edit-a-thons” that help solidify the information on pages of interest or edit incorrect/biased statements. Clearly, the determination of regular contributors, fact-checkers, and scholars alike make Wikipedia a more trustworthy place to find information on everything –not just the 49ers’ GM or Hillary Clinton!
A lot of people can be or have been Wikipedia writers. Nevertheless, the increasing majority of the site’s editors who either inspect existing information for bias or add new knowledge to articles are changing the way Wikipedia is viewed. Attitudes are changing, and the time has come to reexamine Wikipedia’s capability to teach us.
