The danger of Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites on the Internet. While a substantial amount of traffic is perhaps that created by editors adding, changing, deleting and otherwise manipulating information contained within the online 'encyclopaedia', pages from it often shows up in the top three results of any Google search.

Most academics, thankfully, frown upon its usage. However, some previously respectable establishments apparently not only use the encyclopaedia, but take it seriously enough to reproduce the information contained within.

A fairly innocuous event concerning the death of a prolific TV-theme tune composer in 2007 highlights the problems inherent in people taking what Wikipedia says for granted. The 'encyclopaedia' stated on the 20th of September, 2007 (nearly two weeks before his death), that Ronnie Hazlehurst composed the song 'Reach' for pop group S Club 7 at the age of 72.

This addition to the article on Hazlehurst wasn't questioned until after The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Reuters, BBC News and various other news media outlets published the fabrication.

Subsequently, blogs and Internet forums alike were awash with praise for the man who had written the popular and catchy pop tune 'Reach'.

Was that the end of the story? Oh no - Wikipedia is a bureaucracy, you see. It's stuck in a quagmire of rules which transcend common sense and, ultimately, truth. So much so that Wikipedia actually comes close to being able to bend the fabric of reality itself.

A debate on Hazlehurst's article's discussion page at Wikipedia (each article can, and often does, have its own talk page attached to it) suggested that the 'fact' that Hazlehurst wrote S Club 7's hit could be verified by citing The Times. An editor even re-added the information after it was removed. They said, "No evidence of hoax. Three indepedent [sic] sources have said it. It's very arrogant to say it comes from this page!! Cite he didn't." So now this editor is attempting to shift the onus onto those who don't believe the falsification to prove it is an actual falsification. Wikipedia even has policy which protects the content of an article at any given moment, to the detriment of whoever is trying to change it, and to the advantage of whoever claims this policy first. The editor ignores common sense which might suggest that a person who couldn't take the time to register an account with Wikipedia and has only made a grand total of three edits - all concerning the composer and the S Club 7 song - may possibly have been arsing about.

Unfortunately Wikipedia takes itself too seriously: it likes to protect possibilities and popular opinion rather than taking a stance against them and only reporting facts.

Wikipedia can be forgiven for it's feeling of self-importance and even for Jimmy Wales' successful attempt at making it artificially popular by manipulating search engines. People can be forgiven for believing Wikipedia, because it is written by lots of different people from all over the world and therefore it must be pretty balanced and accurate, mustn't it?

Professional journalists though, must surely be pretty embarrassed by the fact that they have relied on the word of whoever has the most time to slap together a website of articles and call it an encyclopaedia in replacement of actual legwork and proper journalism.

Renowned news companies must feel pretty bad about actually having published incorrect information based on nothing more than sheer laziness and other peoples' sloppy work.

The story is old now - over a year old - and hey.. it's not all that bad, is it? I mean, it's not as if this composer (no disrespect to him) was particularly important on the global scheme of things, is it? Perhaps not. But it makes one wonder just how many 'professional journalists' now look to the likes of Wikipedia as their primary or even secondary source, and how often they might be led astray on other 'facts' which might not have been caught as this one was. Or perhaps 'facts' that groups of editors guard intensively against changing.

Prime Ministers and Presidents read newspapers or watch news programmes on TV. Like every other normal person, they have to get their news from the news sources across the world. Besides government intelligence agencies, their news is often from the same sources as our own. The difference is that they have to make life-altering and fateful decisions often based on that information.

On one blog, I read that Wikipedia is OK if you ignore the written blurb and skip right down to the links at the bottom - the references or notes sections. I disagree. Even with those, it is too easy to create a reading list of sources by authors sympathetic to your personal views and opinions, or even snippets which support your personal views and opinions - especially if you have another couple of sympathetic editors who share your views and opinions who are willing to guard the article with you.

Wikipedia was a nice idea in theory but, like any democracy or bureaucracy, it's ultimately flawed.. particularly as it makes up, or takes advantage of, 'policy' on the fly in preference to good old-fashioned common sense.

Whoever knows the Wikipedia system the best, is most often the one who gets their version of any given article protected by that system, regardless of the truth or balance. And some people, some extremists, are prepared to go to great lengths to protect their version of 'The Truth'.