Ever since I began my academic journey, teachers have warning me and my fellow students of the “dangers” of using Wikipedia. Fortunately, that has never stopped me from visiting the sites multiple times for its plethora of information. Designed to help others, Wikipedia allows for individuals to engage in not just consumption, but creation as well. In The World and Wikipedia: How We Are Editing Reality, Andrew Dalby discusses this collaborative experiment and the effects it is having on our society. Dalby, an avid Wiki editor, admits to finding mistakes (and even making some), but still argues the advantages of Wikipedia and supports the use of Wikipedia.
While the evolution of computers continued, so did the evolution of encyclopedias. Many problems arose from the beginning. It was hard to find individual details in these collections of information. It was hard to have all the information needed in one book. Adding multiple volumes and sorting information in alphabetical order helped solve this dilemma, but with society continuously progressing, printed encyclopedia books began to get too big and to expensive to produce. There needed to be a way to make this information easily accessible in an organized fashion, and thanks to the internet, a resolution was formed.
The emergence of Web 2.0 allowed its users to not only search, read and retrieve information, but to publish their own knowledge to the web. This internet advancement gave users the opportunity to disseminate information to an extensive audience (whether they want to find it or not). Along with Web 2.0 came wikis, Wikipedia being the most common and well-known. Wikis are an expandable collection of information in which each web page can be modified by a user.
Like anything else that involves a collaborative effort, Wikipedia has stirred up some great controversy. Although Wikipedia was created to be a place of factual information, with everyone in society as its editor, it is fairly simple to voice biased opinions and even false information. Wikipedia can be easily controlled by individuals who choose to voice their opinions about issues, such as politics, turning Wikipedia into a place of debate, as opposed to a reliable internet resource (14).
Wikipedia has been subject to much criticism for having misleading, wrong information and “embarrassing extracts” of poor article quality and structure on the website. When everyone is an editor, everyone has equal power. Educational background, work experience, recognized achievement has no precedence over who controls the information posted on the website, therefore allowing individuals to put false information on the website, creating “vandalism” to Wikipedia (10). This not only creates problems for its viewers, but it makes it very challenging for the websites administrators as it becomes very easy to lose control over the information.
So why do we still use Wikipedia after knowing all of this? Many times, as stated in the book, these falsehoods are corrected within minutes it is posted due to the overwhelming popularity and dedication that individuals have to the website. Wikipedia gives people the opportunity to showcase and share what they know and are interested in. There are no credentials necessary in order to create a wiki, allowing individuals with no recognized achievement to give out information. While other wiki sites are controlled by “established” individuals, Wikipedia can be controlled by whoever wants to control it. These other sites question society’s intelligence level and go through a process to select its editors to avoid falsehoods and keep their information “neutral”. Although the credibility of the source is always in question, since when does having a degree exclude one from having his or her personal opinions on a matter? It is close to impossible to not certain attitudes and judgments towards specific subjects, deeming this selection process as a waste of time.
Wikipedia’s quickly-gained attention created quite some stir with its “competition”, Britannica. The two differ in that Wikipedia is free while one must subscribe and pay to use Britannica. Also, Britannia believes that an individual needs to do something useful and memorable to gain a wiki page on their website; while to have a page on Wikipedia, someone just needs to have someone else think he or she did something worth writing about. It is obvious that Wikipedia is much more commonly used than Britannica, but why?
I am almost certain every individual who has used the internet has stumbled upon Wikipedia at one point or another. Why is it almost always one of the first suggestions in a web-based search? Wikipedia’s links to other websites could be to blame, or Google could secretly be working with Wikipedia. The more we continue to use Wikipedia, the more prevalent it will become. There is without a doubt a positive and enlightening side to Wikipedia. Wikipedia will not only facilitate research, but always encourage interactive participation, as society is always enduring its “quest for communal knowledge” (51).
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