It must be true - I read it on the web
10 June 2008
The blind faith that used to be reserved for anything read in a newspaper has transferred to a touching belief that the web cannot lie.
On Sunday, Tim Berners-Lee celebrated his 53rd birthday. Many happy returns! I doubt he had any idea of the enormity his project would have on the world today. Initially, the world wide web gave visitors access to acres of written material, a resource for students of all ages. Now there is all manner of ways to access that information, some more credible and transparent that others.
Wikia Search (www.wikia.com) thinks the fact that its search engine can be edited is a ‘cool feature’, but does it make the web a less reliable reference resource? Should information be changed according to a user’s whim?
One of my friends has joined Friends Reunited and lied through his teeth about what he is up to these days. He reports that quite a few people have got in touch to congratulate him on his role as a nuclear physicist for NASA! It just goes to show how people take what is posted on ‘friendship’ and networking sites as gospel, even though the chap in question could be voted least likely to land a ‘proper job’ at college. At least with Friends Reunited it is only your old school friends you can amuse/amaze with outrageous claims.
Wikia Search can be edited so that a result can be moved up or down on the search results page. In fact, entries can be deleted or rewritten. Code can be added to insert so that it includes a site-specific search, leading users straight to your company’s website perhaps.
You can imagine the Alexs in marketing departments across the land rubbing their hands with glee – they can bury the competition, just by changing a little bit of text, and at the same time promote their own product. The hope is of course that nothing so underhand will happen, and that the search results will be influenced, positively, by topic experts and well-meaning, kindly souls, hoping to right wrongs they come across.
To be fair, Wikia Search, like Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), the free online encyclopaedia, is transparent and users can reverse any changes, so as long as people are vigilant, truth will out. The question is how many people will question a search result and then change it?
There is a growing momentum behind Wikipedia’s rival, Citizendium (www.citizendium.org) which has added five million words in its first year and which is adding entries and edits at a rate that will soon see it finely tuned and maturing from its beta status. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales, is editor-in-chief and is working to maintaining, if not exceeding its acceleration of triple growth rate every year to build up the number of articles that can be searched.
Citizendium uses experts to approve articles as well as the general public as contributors. All use their real names, so that self-styled experts cannot compile the entries. This is the accusation levelled at Wikipedia. Groups can ‘squat’ on articles and skew them to their own bias or agenda.
The classic example is when a comedian was delighted to see himself listed on Wikipedia but noticed his date of birth was incorrect. When he edited it to the correct date, he was amazed at his next viewing to find it had been ‘edited’ back and his revision discredited!
Citizendium’s policy of using real names is intended to mean that contributors are responsible and answerable for any inaccuracies or errors and cannot contribute again to the listings under a pseudonym once they have been convicted of ‘vandalism’ or abuse.
The terribly English approach of Citizendium is that, identified by their real names, members are polite, pleasant and accountable as authors. It is interesting when using the two sites, that the description credited to someone has more clout. A little like going online and reading something authoritative on the EPD site or on a mickey-mouse-site that could be expertly crafted by Hayes Major or one of his geek friends!
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