“Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?”
by: Farhad Manjoo
Wikipedia has been known for its easy access, open editing, and overwhelming lack of credible information. Everyone in the world, despite their expertise, has been able to post on Wikipedia: editing and creating information for the masses. This has caused a major debate on whether the site is a credible source for general knowledge and research papers. Recently, Wikipedia has tried to address this problem with more controls such as cross-checking the posts for accuracy. Another major problem is the site’s lack of diversity in people posting: the majority posting are men. As noted in the article, these issues can continue to decrease postings until Wikipedia meets its demise.
Wikipedia should have controls that filter for accuracy amongst the site’s posts. Too many people take Wikipedia at “face value” without double-checking for its accuracy. With this in mind, the level of misinformation on websites such as Wikipedia can have mixed effects on people (general misinformation, affecting a grade on a research paper, etc.) If the implementation of controls on Wikipedia are causing a decrease in posts, it makes me wonder if people are more concerned with just being heard versus actually posting expert, accurate information. As avid users of the internet and its many resources you would think society would be happy that certain sites, like Wikipedia, are trying to prevent individuals from being misinformed. As for the lack of women posting: if they are anything like myself, I am too busy and have way better things to do than try to edit or create posts online, especially when I have no expertise on the topic!
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