Columns
Epilog:
The great claim for the internet was that it would give users access to all the information in the world. Why look at one source of information when you can access everything, consider every argument, and weigh up the relative trust and reliability of each source yourself? It seemed to be the perfect solution, and like most "perfect" things it was fatally flawed.
First, you have to trust the tool that's doing the aggregation. Today, most people use a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, but it's impossible to shake the feeling that the results are heavily influenced by how much money the content providers have given each search engine vendor to ensure their site is on the first page of results. Second, you have to consider whether the information that's been indexed is really as reliable as you'd hope, or if there's any bias in play.
Go back to the great paper encyclopedias. Only a fool would claim that the hundreds of authors who wrote commissioned articles were free from any personal bias. They either wilfully span the tales in one direction or wrote the entries from a particular point of view. I love reading through old copies of Encyclopędia Britannica to see how things have changed since the 1930s. Many entries are now almost historical fiction compared with today's thinking. This doesn't damage the value of the set, though - I still think it's worth reading a modern edition of Britannica, and the only way to do that is on paper. Why is it worth reading? Because of the effort that was put into the research and the writing.
So I get quite annoyed at people who bash Wikipedia. No, it isn't bomb proof, nor is it definitive, but it's the best we have, and it's mostly written from a genuine point of view. I use Wikipedia
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Think of it this way: Britannica takes a huge effort even to lift off the ground. Wikipedia relies on an enormous collection of "ten minutes of your time" articles written by a lot of people. Google requires no effort from anyone, except those who flash the cash to get onto the front page.
I can hear the screams of anguish already. You're spitting into your cappuccino and proclaiming that Wikipedia is full of rubbish: too many people are writing all sorts of nonsense, many pages are overloaded with the same stuff, and there's no logical editing structure or true content-management solution in place. It seems that almost anyone can have a fiddle and companies are editing their entries to put a positive spin on their profiles.
Well, guess what? That's life. People will always want to put a good spin on their peccadilloes - this isn't new to Wikipedia. The reality with information is that the closer you get to it, the more flavours and versions of "truth" you see. Try reading any biographies written by members of pop groups from the 1980s and you'll wonder if certain artistes were even in the same band given the chasm that exists between what two members will "recall". Yes, you must grapple with the question of "what is truth?" - but does it really matter anyway?
Wikipedia isn't immune to these problems, because these issues are endemic to any sort of knowledge store. We shouldn't, however, overlook the general usefulness of most of the information - it isn't too hard to spot the silly entries. Even I realised that Ronnie Hazlehurst, the well-known and hugely talented BBC music writer who recently died, didn't write a song for S Club 7 or some other talentless collection of XX chromosomes. However, I did have a giggle when many newspapers and websites were happy to repeat the claim, showing how little thinking goes into news reporting today. Google, click, copy, paste, file.
