Alex Cantatore

Look, I love Wikipedia as much as the next guy. After all, it’s the absolute best source for any information ever known to man [citation needed].

What’s that? Oh, that pesky little citation needed tag, pay no attention to that, trusty reader.

You see, information on Wikipedia is nearly infallible. It’s just that “nearly” that causes trouble. Allow me to relate a little anecdote.

In college, I was (un)fortunate enough to take a class on the literature of Daniel Defoe, most famous for the novel “Robinson Crusoe.” Defoe was also a prolific political writer, and in 1709 he penned an eloquent argument for a balance of power in international relations that directly led to the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

Now, this clearly isn’t information that you or I rely upon to live our daily lives, but it is a fact of history. And it’s a fact of history that Wikipedia had wrong until recently.

When I visited the Wikipedia page for the Treaty of Utrecht while I was in that Defoe class, I found no mention of Defoe’s writings, and even a claim that the Treaty of Utrecht had created the concept of balance of power. Doing my duty, as a reader of a user-edited encyclopedia, I made a note on the discussion page relating what I knew about Defoe’s role.

And I was promptly shot down by the Wikipedia hardcore who refused to change the erroneous article, claiming that I was wrong with no justification whatsoever. I personally thought that their arguments were in need of a [citation needed] tag, but I had no recourse against the voice of the Wikipedia mob.

In truth, though, I believe that Wikipedia-and the Internet in general-has served a great purpose in developing the world’s knowledge. And, today, that Treaty of Utrecht page has been changed to be mostly correct, proving that the Wikipedia model does work if you give it enough time.

But really, it’s not about Wikipedia being always right. It’s that all of the world’s people are coming together to craft a living document that contains all of the information that they’ve ever heard, be it about Professional Wrestling Holds or obscure 80’s television series, no matter if it’s right or wrong.

And the fact is that a lot of the information on Wikipedia-being placed into this encyclopedia by average people like you and me, trying to do their best-is just plain wrong.

Sure, everyone’s heard about the 2005 study which found Wikipedia was, more or less, about as accurate as the legendary “Encyclopaedia Brittanica” when it came to scientific articles. But according to some researchers (one of whom, admittedly, was funded by the Brittanica), that research was flawed.

I think it’s missing the point though, to argue that a user-edited Wikipedia is as reliable as a professional encyclopedia. I think the important point is the converse; that Wikipedia is as unreliable as a professional encyclopedia. And that raises a lot of questions about the blind trust we often place in those who provide us information.

In the 1950s Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olberman would have been taken at face value, shining beacons of unmitigated truth on the airwaves. Nowadays, we even have other TV programs, like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” dedicated to debunking the “terrorist fist jabs” and false claims made on major, mainstream media outlets. And, should “The Daily Show” miss something, YouTube won’t.

Americans today take the time to consider the source of everything they hear. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say some ridiculous fact and then qualify it with, “But I read it on some blog,” or “But I heard it online.” That’s the kind of thing you never heard the TV generation doing, with a casual, “But I heard it on CBS.”

So, yes, perhaps Wikipedia isn’t the greatest secondary source if you’re looking for the cold hard facts. But it’s an outstanding learning tool that has shaped the way a whole generation views fact and fiction. It has forced us to reconsider just how much trust you can place in anyone’s words, even if they say them with the strongest conviction as truthfully as they can.

Today’s Internet generation has grown up with a healthy dose of skepticism for everything they read, hear, and see. If anything, I believe that this is the greatest gift the Internet-and Wikipedia-has given us.

Originally published in the Turlock Journal 11/7/2008.
Retrieved from the Turlock Journal Web site.