Wikipedia's Great Fraud
By Dan Blacharksi, ITworld.com
Wikipedia's basic premise is built on a pseudo-intellectual concept of collective contributions, on the mistaken belief that since there are lots of people constantly contributing and reviewing entries, they will somehow come out accurate. Chairman Mao would have been proud. Wikipedia cheerleaders believe that the old traditions of mainstream media (fact-checking and professional editing) lack merit, and that an entry that is written by an anonymous contributor, and subsequently reviewed and edited by many other anonymous contributors, will be inherently superior. It's rather like getting a hundred monkeys in a room together and expecting them to produce Hamlet.
Until last week, one of the most prolific contributors was one such anonymous person named "Essjay," who claimed to be a scholar with multiple degrees. There’s been a large degree of scandal since Essjay has been shown to be nothing of the sort, but what’s even more amazing is that he felt justified in lying and that Wikipedia supporters (and Jimbo Wales himself) justified his actions. Essjay was pretending to be something he's not -- but that's not too surprising. Wikipedia itself, from the very beginning, pretends to be something it's not, and its very existence is an affront to real writers and editors everywhere.
Read the full column here.
Wikipedia's basic premise is built on a pseudo-intellectual concept of collective contributions, on the mistaken belief that since there are lots of people constantly contributing and reviewing entries, they will somehow come out accurate. Chairman Mao would have been proud. Wikipedia cheerleaders believe that the old traditions of mainstream media (fact-checking and professional editing) lack merit, and that an entry that is written by an anonymous contributor, and subsequently reviewed and edited by many other anonymous contributors, will be inherently superior. It's rather like getting a hundred monkeys in a room together and expecting them to produce Hamlet.
Until last week, one of the most prolific contributors was one such anonymous person named "Essjay," who claimed to be a scholar with multiple degrees. There’s been a large degree of scandal since Essjay has been shown to be nothing of the sort, but what’s even more amazing is that he felt justified in lying and that Wikipedia supporters (and Jimbo Wales himself) justified his actions. Essjay was pretending to be something he's not -- but that's not too surprising. Wikipedia itself, from the very beginning, pretends to be something it's not, and its very existence is an affront to real writers and editors everywhere.
Read the full column here.
posted by ITworld Editors at 9:34 AM
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