In defense of Wikipedia

The traditional argument against Wikipedia goes a bit like this:

Wikipedia is a ‘web-site’, on the ‘internet’, I don’t understand it very well but apparently anyone can contribute to it. And since everyone on the internet is stupid then this ‘web-site’ must be full of lies.

Unfortunately the traditional media is full of people who are fearful of what they don’t understand. I’m not denying that there are idiots on the internet, there are, just take a look at some of the comments on the BBC Have Your Say section, or the 4chan sports board to see what I mean. Trolls and flamewars have existed since USENET and are not new. And they don’t just exist on the internet.

Wikipedia however is a self-regulated system, contributors can be confronted with the [citation needed] tag and made to justify facts. The idiots I spoke of above are recognised by moderators. Vandalism is not tolerated, with the ultimate sanction being suspension of editing rights for users IP addresses. There is a talk page for every article where contributors can debate issues relating to the article. Anything written can be scrutinized, directly held to account and changed instantly.

Let’s compare this to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It costs £1,195 and contains about 65,000 articles. Wikipedia is free and contains 3,157,809 articles (at the time of writing). If the Encyclopaedia Britannica prints a lie or a mistake, it would have to be notified to the authors who might then correct it in the next edition: a year later.

Imagine, if you will, a world without Wikipedia. Although the benefits of free information are not easily recognisable now, in a decade’s time it’s significance will be felt.

For anyone looking for more information, Wikipedia also has an article on itself and an explanation of it’s reliability.