Reader Trouble
07 December, 2005
Online encyclopedia and Web 2.0 darling Wikipedia was in the news this week - for once, not as the subject of another profile on how "democratic media" is going to change the news industry.
In fact, it seems that the latest events suggest that there will be a role for professional journalists and editors after all.
So it's ironic, then, that Wikipedia's policy of anonymous online content entry, policed and edited by other volunteer writers, was derailed by a former old-school journalist, John Seigenthaler.
Seigenthaler complained that for four months, Wikipedia carried an entry linking him to the assassinations of John F. and Bobby Kennedy. The story was edited three days after it was published in May this year: A spelling error was corrected. After that, it remained unchanged until Wikipedia took it down following Seigenthaler's protests.
The former journalist wrote that of the whole entry, only one line was fact - that he had been Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant. When he tried to discover the source of the libel, Wikipedia's anonymous contributions policy could only supply him with a Bell South internet account - and the telecommunications company did not link a name to the account.
Wikipedia has responded by clipping its editorial wings. Readers wishing to contribute new entries to the online encyclopedia will now have to register - though they will not be required to submit an email address.
When new articles are posted on Wikipedia, they are supposed to be checked by volunteer "new page" editors, who cover entries linked to their areas of interest. Once posted on the site, readers are free to add and edit details of each article. In theory, this should create a vast user-generated information resource encompassing the best of its users' knowledge - as indeed it does, in the many cases where contributors have compiled excellent and informative entries.
However, it relies on a certain level of disinterestedness on behalf of its contributors. Hot political stories, like the Israel-Palestine conflict, might never please everyone - though the restless updating following new developments could also be interpreted as an example of Wikipedia's topicality. The same could not be said for a would-be edit to the site's article on Abortion, where the previous text was replaced with the word "Murder" writeen 143 times.
Added to the inevitable ideological faultlines, there's also the possibility of cranks or people bearing personal grudges. In late November, podcasting guru Adam Curry was accused of editing Wikipedia's Podcasting entry to pump up his role in the creation of the medium - and deleting any mention of others who contributed to the podcasting phenomenon.
Perhaps such screw-ups are to be expected in a site that boasts three million entries in 205 languages, and is monitored mostly by volunteers. One might argue that Wikipedia's hit rate is actually pretty good for a publication on that scale - other institutions, including the New York Times and the BBC have been pulled up for biased or false reporting in recent months.
However, it provokes serious questions about reliability and responsibility, not just for the online encyclopedia but also for the "democratic media" represented by bloggers and citizen journalists.
A professional journalist is no more likely to be unbiased or just simply right as a blogger or wikipedian. However, he is accountable, or he should be: Faults in his reports are easily pulled up by readers and if he does publish libels, an entire industry of lawyers exists to provide redress. If he repeatedly makes errors, he'll get the sack.
Bloggers respond that they, too, are subject to contradiction, and that their online presence allows them to correct errors quickly in response to reader comments - indeed, some blog entries extend well into their comments section, in a "dialogue" between the blogger and his readers or critics. Furthermore, while not subject to pre-publication fact-checking and editing, bloggers could argue that they exist in a "free market of ideas" - if they repeatedly publish falsehoods, they will lose credibility and readers.
The most popular sites will be those sites should, in theory, be those that are most reliable. Of course, this sidesteps the fact that the most popular sites can often be those which indulge their readers' political beliefs or prejudices.
Of course, there is and should be room for both media. Not many bloggers report from the front lines in Iraq or Washington. Some blogs have become more reliable and authorative sources of commentary than their counterpart op-ed columnists in the mainstream media.
But bringing the two together will be problematic. Another wiki, or collaborative writing experiment, took place in June 2005 on the online editorial pages of the LA Times. The newspaper invited readers to edit an op-ed on withdrawl strategy in Iraq. Many readers responded to this "wikitorial" in the spirit of the experiment, but before long bad-tempered arguments, posting of foul language and pornographic photos outpaced the Times' monitors' ability to keep the wikitorial in line.
The LA Times withdrew the experiment the following day.
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