Simson Garfinkel takes a look at authority and sourcing in Wikipedia world with an article in the latest edition of Technology Review. He focuses on Wikipedia’s requirement to cite published sources in adding information to Wikipedia articles. Yes, with a mob-written encyclopedia, a requirement for citing published, vetted sources makes sense, he writes.
“But there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people’s written words: Many publications don’t do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right,” Mr. Garfinkel writes. “For instance, Dun and Bradstreet gets the information for its small-business information reports in part by asking those very same small businesses to fill out questionnaires about themselves.”
This policy is particularly problematic if you are the authority on a particular topic, but you can’t use your own base of knowledge. Jaron Lanier, a futurist, had problems changing a statement on the Wikipedia entry about himself that said he was a filmmaker. He wasn’t a filmmaker, yet every time he removed that non-fact, someone put it back in.
He finally got the item changed, but was then criticized for editing his own wikientry. (PR directors who maintain their college Wikipedia pages, take note.) —Scott Carlson
