In utilizing search directories for this post (which, I admittedly didn’t use much before this class), I chose to use three different search engines from my last post so that I could become more familiar with them. Specifically, I used Infomine (a scholarly search engine) along with Mahalo.com and About.com (general research engines). The trouble with search directories is you have to use much more clear search terms when searching within them than using search engines like Google. At first I tried to search Mahalo.com for “Wikipedia controversy,” finding no results. For Mahalo.com, I then switched to searching “Wikipedia.” Plain and simple.
Interestingly, a list of pretty helpful “Fast Facts” popped up immediately on the Search Result’s page. They included:
Launched on January 15, 2001
Has strictly neutral point of view
The English language version has over 2 million articles
Largest encyclopedia in the world
Founders: Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger
Built on MediaWiki Software
Maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikipedia has 23 paid members of staff
The site relies on 150,000 volunteers
There are currently more than 11 million Wikipedia articles
The site has translations in 265 languages
I thought this information was a pretty basic crash course in Wikipedia itself, but also contained some helpful and interesting facts. There was also an interesting youtube.com video (VPRO International: Truth According to Wikipedia) linked to on the page that provided a description of the transition from research in the library to research on Wikipedia. It is long, running at 48 minutes, but pieces of it could be added to our presentation. Additionally from this same page came a section called “Controversy,” which again gave a basic grasp of Wikipedia’s drawbacks:
“The main issues that Wikipedia has had to face are charges of bias and unreliability. The
openly editable format leads some to believe the content on Wikipedia is unreliable, as anyone
can edit the text to read anything they want. Wikipedia solves this problem by locking down
hot button pages, such as George W. Bush, from editing, and by having a team of trusted
editors check edits. They also rely on users to catch and report errors.”
In general, Mahalo’s results page (http://www.mahalo.com/Wikipedia) was really helpful in obtaining basic information about Wikipedia. It could prove to be a very important tool when our group presentation comes around. The site itself is run by an company called EdgeCast, which provides its customers with cost benefits so customers can control their own content delivery network. The only drawback of Mahalo.com is it doesn’t cite exactly where its facts came from or who wrote them. Additionally, while the site is copyrighted 2007-2008, no date is attributed to the information. While it appears current, there is no way to know for sure.
As a result, I continued my search and had a great deal of success with About.com. This search directory actually yielded results when using the search term, “Wikipedia controversy.” From these results, I found one site: http://pcworld.about.com/news/Aug042006id126659.htm containing an article called, “Wikipedia to Strive for Higher Quality Content.” In the article, the author, China Martens, outlines the biggest controversy of Wikipedia: reliability of information. She mentions an article from the year previous from John Seigenthaler, about what he found on his own Wikipedia biography, which included defamatory content. This content, while untrue, remained unaltered for four months. Martens also describe how controls have since been put in place on Wikipedia, including system administrators who are now blocking users who repeatedly vandalize entries. Interestingly, Marten mentions a journal entry from “Nature,” outlining how scientific Wikipedia articles average three errors, compared to four found in “Encyclopaedia Britannica.”
While it contains no exact date, this article appears to be a couple of years old (possibly dating from 2006 based upon its reference to Seigenthaler), but still covers the issues surrounding Wikipedia well. About.com is part of the New York Times Company, which proclaims itself as being “committed to quality news.” The company’s revenues in 2007 were $3.2 billion, and includes ownership of “The New York Times, 18 other newspapers, and more than 50 websites. The article I read seems pretty balanced, presenting arguments for both sides of the story, however it seems to favor Wikipedia being more inaccurate. Therefore, it would be beneficial to find a site that is more “pro-Wikipedia.”
As I mentioned earlier, Martens mentioned another article written by John Seigenthaler. I pursued this article. Again, I used About.com, searching “John Seigenthaler, Wikipedia.” It resulted in his 2005 (outdated, but still interesting) USA Today article: “A false Wikipedia ‘biography.’ ” (http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm). It was really interesting to read an article about someone who has had false information “published” about him on Wikipedia and the results it had on his career. In his article Seigenthaler provides valuable arguments against Wikipedia being a source for universal knowledge and a world encyclopedia. He mentions how Wikipedia editors did nothing more to edit the false information other than correcting the spelling of “early” in the entry. The reliability of the information posted was never tested.
The problem with this article is two-fold. Firstly, the article was published November 29, 2005. Obviously, this is outdated, and it can easily be assumed (at least I would hope) that Wikipedia has added new measures to ensure the accurateness of its entries. This leads to the other problem with this article: it is extremely biased. Seigenthaler gives Wikipedia no leniency whatsoever. He never acknowledges how Wikipedia might be an important tool in providing quick and easy information to mass amounts of people. Therefore, more research should be done on how Wikipedia is beneficial.
It also worries me that Mahalo doesn't cite where it's fact are from or who wrote them. I think the facts that came up are interesting, though, because they bring up some interesting questions. It claims that Wikipedia "has a strictly neutral point of view" (opinion-unfounded?), that the founders are Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger (a topic which in itself has controversy surrounding it) and that wikipedia ONLY has 23 paid members of staff (a small number to regulate a site this big and influencial?).
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should look into some of these :)