Boon or Bane? Let the masses decide.
I have always loved encyclopedias. If you stick me in a house full of strangers and make me stay there for a week, as long as they have a set of reading materials, preferably encyclopedias, I'd be okay. When I went back home last year to attend to my ailing father, I dusted off the old set he bought for us a long time ago during my free time. There's always something about opening such books - it was always some kind of adventure to embark on.
It wasn't far-fetched that with the Internet age, someone would eventually put an encyclopedia online. To demonstrate the vision of a global village and the power of the masses, Wikipedia was born. And to me, it has been very, very useful - especially that entries are updated as often and as quickly as possible. This real-time updating practically pushed Grolier and Britannica into extinction.
But with freedom comes responsibility, as the flip/dark side of this empowerment has been demonstrated in recent events, where information is twisted for other ends.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Georgia gubernatorial candidate accepted the resignation of her campaign manager Wednesday after he was accused of changing the online Wikipedia biography of an opponent in the upcoming Democratic primary.
Secretary of State Cathy Cox's opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, said Cox campaign manager Morton Brilliant altered an online encyclopedia entry to include a reference to Taylor's son being arrested for DUI after an accident that killed his passenger.
"We have reviewed the situation carefully and everything I have seen in this short period of time indicates that the posting originated from my campaign office," Cox said. "I am genuinely sorry for any anguish this incident has caused the Taylor family."
The resignation came after Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales confirmed that the addition to the biography came from an IP address affiliated with the Cox campaign.
Additionally, this has not been the first time that a Wikipedia entry has caused an uproar. As CNN noted, " ... the site has become a popular tool among politicians wishing to slam a rival or laud themselves", and "... the problem is so widespread that Wikipedia has tightened its submission guidelines and set up alerts so that its operators know when Capitol Hill staffers edit online profiles."
Of course, if you're somewhat famous and merit an entry in an encyclopedia, you're instantly a target.
One of the most well-known instances of an error on the site involved John Seigenthaler Sr., whose Wikipedia biography said that he was linked to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. The man who posted the false information later said he was playing a joke, but only after the information had been on the site for 132 days and had been picked up by other Web sites.
Seigenthaler, a retired journalist and Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s, wrote a November column in USA Today calling Wikipedia a "flawed and irresponsible research tool."
"When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of 'gossip,' " Seigenthaler wrote in the column. "She held a feather pillow and said, 'If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people.' For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia."
The site has also come under fire from former contributors, but for reasons this time of being not too open at all, and overtures to improve this atmosphere get crushed under the boot heels of a select committee who control Wiki information.
http://www.kapitalism.net/thoughts/wikipedia.htm
but for some humor's sake (and forgive the jock/immature slant somewhat - and if you're offended by some entries, blame them, not me), here's the big up yours to the Wiki gods:
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Main_Page
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