Veracity -- look it up

In conducting interviews and gathering background for January's T+D article on THE FUTURE OF THE PROFESSION, a number of people mentioned different ways learners will, well, learn in the years ahead. More than a few believe self-directed efforts, enabled by the incredible power of the Web, will make us all smarter and better at our jobs. Virtually every person I contacted mentioned Wikis, or the Wikipedia, as one of the tools that will change the way we live.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia edited by experts on a specific subject, is hailed for its openess and democracy, in that it allows subjects to be updated by virtually anyone with an Internet connection. Seems like a great idea until you think about it just a bit. Too many people confuse content with knowledge. Un-vetted, un-verified, un-edited input is not worth much more than conversation over a cup of coffee at a diner. The speaker may sound like an expert, but it ain't necessarily so.

I would urge you to look at how simple it was for someone to enter false and damaging information about another person on a Wikipedia entry. No one was checking on it, and if not for the efforts of an outspoken critic of the Wiki movement who conducted a very skillful investigation of the entries, it might have gone unnoticed. The prankster lost his job as a result.

Wikis are great, in some ways. And as long as you accept the fact that they are not a replacement for real, well-researched, professional repositories of knowledge, you will be fine. But I really don't want someone performing dentistry on me or replacing my gas water heater based on what he learned online in a Wiki. Do you?

Comments

[JOE]

Sure I would. Dentist, Doctor, heater, whatever. Like you said, a wiki is as good as a conversation in a coffee shop. I know that I have gained professional knowledge at coffee shops. The real key is who is in that cofee shop.

A wiki is only as good as the people who are adding knowledge to it. If a wiki is is limited to the knoweldgeable people for posting, it is very useful. Your criticism of wikipedia doesn't account for the use of limited-population wikis.

In fact, there is a fundamental flaw with the crtique presented in the article you reference. The false article in question was not linked to any other wikipedia entry. I was placed deliberatley as a joke - the author has come out recently and admitted it - and the only way someone could get to that wiki was to look specifically for the person in question. The article was designed to be problematic. Once again, it opens up the question of knowing who is osting to the wiki.

As for your final comment, first, wiki's are real depositories of knowledge. Excluding them from that category makes you ook like a luddite, which I recall was a concern of yours in your first post. I will agree, howeer, that wikis are usually not "well-researched, professional repositories of knowledge" However, the research process that approved viox is not strong support for your assertion that people "will be fine" if you trust only in traditional sources of knoweldge.

[JOE]

Here's another interesting counterpoint:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/13409033.htm

The journal Nature has found that in regard to scientific topics, Wikipedia is about as accurate as Encycplopedia Brittanica. Clearly, wikipedia has value as a knowledge resource. I would suggest the challenge you point out is more precisely a question of when and where is it a useful resource