The Cult of Wikipedia

Over the course of the past few years, a new phenomenon has impacted the lives of millions by fundamentally altering both the way that information is transferred and the nature of the information being relayed. The promise of New Media to revolutionize the way in which people perceive their world has been realized via the popular internet website Wikipedia, a multi-lingual database to which anyone - layman or scholar - can contribute. This feature simultaneously provides both its greatest asset and its greatest flaw, as the sheer volume of this self-described "encyclopedia" is matched only by the massive potential for fraud within the various articles of the database.

To the credit of its co-founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia has done an admirable job of maintaining the quality of its articles. Mistakes and vandalism are corrected by virtue of "talk" pages (public discourse over points of contention), the ability of select users to lock pages that are prone to error, and competent moderation by trustworthy users who collectively monitor every article 24/7 for erroneous submissions. In a study by the magazine "Nature," it was found that Wikipedia's free content contained roughly the same number of errors as the venerable "Encylopedia Britannica," a pay-to-use service. Anecdotally, I can testify to the excellent upkeep of Wikipedia's articles. Just yesterday, within minutes of adding some blatantly false claims to an obscure article about a pornstar named Pamela Peaks ("obscure" for good reason, I assure you), my erroneous entry was corrected by a long-time wiki contributor.

In any event, Wikipedia is not without its problems. The departure of Larry Sanger, the selfsame co-founder, is explained in an article on - you guessed it! - Wikipedia:

Later, in December 2004, Sanger wrote a critical article for the website Kuro5hin, in which he admitted that there had existed "a certain poisonous social or political atmosphere in the project" that had also accounted for his departure.[10] While claiming "to appreciate the merits of Wikipedia fully" and to know and support "the mission and broad policy outlines of Wikipedia very well", Sanger maintained that there are serious problems with the project. There was, he wrote, a lack of public perception of credibility, and the project put "difficult people, trolls, and their enablers" into too much prominence; these problems, he maintained, were a feature of the project's "anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise".

Anti-elitism aside, Wikipedia proves its ultimate utility on a daily basis. Not only have I linked to Wikipedia several times in the short history of this blog, my classmates in Writing 340 too have talked of utilizing Wikipedia as their go-to site for information. Caitie, a classmate of mine who majors in journalism, spoke of visiting Wikipedia in order to learn more about the "AC360" anchor who would become her favorite journalist, Anderson Cooper. I myself have been known to use Wikipedia to study for finals in classes ranging from Western Civilization to chemistry. To be sure, the shortcomings of Wikipedia as articulated by Larry Sanger must always be considered when exclusively using the database as one's source of information. But for better or worse, Wikipedia has evolved into the rank-and-file's premiere authority on history, science, politics, religion, and a myriad of other subjects and social issues that might not be as clear-cut as Wikipedia's articles present them. The ease in visiting the homepage, searching for something to read about (in English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese, or what have you), and then absorbing cited information that appears professional to the layperson proves irresistably attractive to those who desire a digested account of whatever they seek to learn about.