Wikipedia requires writer, editors, and mechanisms that remove vandalism or slander. It is hard to have a balance between open creation and limiting malicious or untrue content like bigotry, child pornography, and other explicit changes that may go undetected for 1,000s of page views.
As an example from The Simpsons (Episode Title: Apocalypse Cow) illustrates Wikipedia's vulnerability:
Bart: So Dean Martin would show up at the last minute and do everything in just one take?
Homer: That's right.
Bart: But Wikipedia said he was "passionate about rehearsal."
Homer: Don't you worry about Wikipedia. We'll change it when we get home. We'll change a lot of things.
One of the best things about Wikipedia is that anyone can join and create a new article, but this gift is also a curse. Anyone can make foolish revisions that may remain unchanged for some time, but Wikipedia does seem to be implementing measures that are meant to capture and remove blatantly false or offensive edits to pages. The reality of participatory culture is that it is a two way street where information has to be able to transmitted easily and quickly from the users, but that info stream also must be able to be reversed or stopped by administrators/users.
No comments:
Post a Comment