Wonderful World of Wiki

In case you missed the news recently about a certain encyclopedia, Wikipedia, an online informational resource founded in 2001 where anyone can edit any of its content, has had a series of high profile incidents recently where individuals have abused the established policies of this democratically edited encyclopedia. The fact that Wikipedia has made headlines in the world’s top news outlets, shows the increasing importance and value of this free service.

Presented in ten different languages, Wikipedia is a rich resource of information on just about every subject under the sun. At first I was unsure of what to make of Wikipedia, as I raise a suspicious brow to any service that allows anyone to edit any of its content. Perhaps predictably, this has led to recent abuses by biased and partisan sources, forcing the service to tighten its policy of the editing and publishing process. Despite these rule changes, however, the core tenet of people being allowed to edit any of its content still stands.

Soon after being introduced to Wikipedia a couple of years ago, my enthusiasm soon waned after worrying how accurate a site such as Wikipedia could be when compared to a professional site such as Encyclopedia Britannica, where all articles are edited by experts in the field. As much as Hollywood movies distort history, the world didn’t need further fuel to the fire of historical misperception. Wikipedia is a completely free service, whereas Encyclopedia Britannica charges thousands of dollars for its entire set of printed encyclopedias and a monthly and yearly fee to subscribe to its online service. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist then to figure out which service the general public would refer to when researching a particular subject.

However, a recent study by the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has shown that the gap between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica is not nearly as wide as originally thought. As reported in many news outlets, NPG showed that content in both Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica had roughly the same margin of error in its content. This is amazing considering that Encyclopedia Briannica was first published in 1768 and Wikipedia just five years ago in 2001! With a 238 year head start over its much younger rival, Encyclopedia Britannica will have to figure out a way to compete with the fast evolving Wikipedia in the arena of information dispensation.

As I have said, Wikipedia is a democratic process in writing content for articles on any particular subject. That doesn’t mean that just anyone can go in and edit an article unnoticed, as Wikipedia has a process of checks, balances and reviews that help govern the vast resources of information that reside on the site. If an article is deemed unworthy, it is voted off the site never to be seen again, or it is voted to stay on the site, with Wikipedians helping to further edit your article to make sure it falls into accordance with the site’s rules of editorial markup, grammar and organization.

To see an example of Wikipedian evolution, I submitted an article regarding Sweden’s stance on neutrality during the Second World War. I submitted this article on February 25, 2004, and over a period of 2 years, the article has been edited at least 109 times (as of this writing), with the most recent edit being two days ago on February 9. Edits are based on grammatical errors, organization of content according to Wikipedia’s rules of presentation, factual mistakes and further additions of information regarding the subject.

To see the original article Swedish Neutrality During World War II, you can read it on this blog at:

http://www.glinka.com/?p=45

And to see the two year old evolved article on Wikipedia, you can read it at the following address:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II

The end of the article shows a series of links of which one includes the editing history of that particular article. While the main gist of the article remains from the original author, it has clearly become an article of a collective group of people who have done the research and study to ensure its accuracy and truthfulness.

Now that I have been assured that Wikipedia is indeed a reputable source of information, I will continue to use it as a resource for my questions of historical information. While it may not be wise to quote it in an actual academic papers, it does help break the ground on the academic research needed to acquire such information.

Try it out!