Wikians R Us and Some Folks Don't Like that Very Much
Earlier this week, Matt Drudge featured an odd news item about mysterious threats
between Florida witches; threats communicated in notes wrapped around rocks
and written in ancient Theban script. Of course, maybe the first thing everyone
who read the story thought (I did.) was, why not use Wiccan powers to threaten
each other? I mean, a note wrapped around a rock thrown through a window - how
Muggle-ish.
I've known some Wiccans and I know, of course, that they do not do those kinds
of things, but I grew up before it was socially acceptable to be anything other
than what everyone else seemed to be, and I've apparently got my built-in preconceptions,
just like others. But it was an unfortunate item to appear in any popular media
at the same time as the biggest press that the Wikipedia has ever gotten--and
pretty negative press at that.
I have no doubt that the huge number of Americans who still think that Saddam
Hussein was the evil mind behind 9/11 will make the connection: Wicca/Wiki,
and for a long time to come have bad attitudes toward a great tool.
I've found that on campus a person's knowledge of Wikipedia, prior to these
events, varied widely among specific niches. If you are an information technologist
of the CIO- or webmaster-type, you probably knew about it due to the work you
perform every day. One of the two other user groups who knew of Wikipedia were
the youngest students on campus, Millennials (basically students age 21 or younger),
who have found it to be the most useful research tool available to them for
school papers. The other group is faculty members, some of whom approve of the
concept heartily, but many of whom have been annoyed by the fact that their
students are using this non-verified major source of information.
Oh, and research librarians, of course. They know everything. Maybe writers,
too: It's certain that when I want to learn about something new that is more
focused than I can get to in a single Google search, I am off to Wikipedia at
once, at least as a place to start.
But it has until this week remained relatively unknown to most people. Nearly
every person who I've ever mentioned Wikipedia to in the past couple of months
has said "Huh?" or "What?"
But I had spent some time in Wikipedia, and have noticed that some of the articles
about higher education institutions contain information that the institutional
leaders might not think appropriate. That led me to lead the "SCUP Links"
section of the Society for College and University Planning's "SCUP
Email News" weekly (free) email newsletter each of the previous two
weeks with a note that folks should take a closer look at the "article"
in Wikipedia about their own college or university. (This was before the recent
news broke.)
There's no way for me to measure it, of course, but I'd be willing to bet now
that way more than half of the people who have heard of Wikipedia have a negative
attitude about it. And those are probably the people who know the least about
it, who have just learned of it. What's the story behind the negative press
for Wikipedia?
Wikipedia depends on communities of people who congregate around "articles,"
each person getting alerts about changes to the article and as a whole the community
ensures that radical changes that are incorrect are fixed almost instantly.
In this first recent case, an article was created by a single person and no
one else ever took a look at it. No one went there, no one read it, there was
no community of watchers to correct miss-statements. It was about a man named
John Seigenthaler, who was professional colleague of Robert F. Kennedy. The
article claimed that he was involved in Kennedy's assassination, and contained
a lot of other false information as well.
Then, along comes John Seigenthaler himself. Most likely the first person other
than the author of the article to read it and he was very unhappy. The
story
of his frustration at trying to find our who posted the false information
is a telling one. As the story hit, additional false information in Wikipedia
biographies came to light. Here are some of the headlines that ensued:
Wikipedia's
accuracy challenged again
Podshow
Founder Actions Lead To Questions About Wikipedia ...
Wikipedia's
Open-Source Licks Open Wound
Wikipedia
Bio Claimed Slanderous
The
Danger of Wikipedia
Wikipedia:
A Techno-Cult of Ignorance
Can you doubt that this is resonating in the subconscious minds of at least
some people and connecting up with their attitudes about witches(!)?
With regard to the false biography, I think that the Wikipedia folks are making
all the right moves, so far, including the most important one: Registration
is now required to become authorized to make changes to Wikipedia articles.
I know because I went there and was grievously disappointed to find that there
was no article on Terry Calhoun.
As the Wikipedia founder said in
one
recent article: Any place where the general public is allowed to freely
express their opinion without having any sort of prior approval from authority
- it is dangerous." (Those of us who run email lists and participate in
online forums already knew that.)
But a lot of damage has been done. And that "Wiki" name may have
to change. As well, Wikipedia may have to hire some lawyers and PR folks.
