Information Research Weblog

Wikipedia has been in the news recently, most seriously as the result of a claim that an anonymous 'editor' had presented false information about one John Seigenthaler - a former aide to Edward Kennedy. The suggestion was made that Seigenthaler had some role in the assassination of Kennedy. Wikipedia has edited out that material and now carries a brief account of the issue. Seigenthaler has written about the problem, suggesting that Wikipedia's lack of any control over the submission of text means that it cannot be a trusted information source. For a source such as Wikipedia, which has several hundred thousand entries and is visited by millions daily, this is a serious issue. The fact that the false information was discovered is, perhaps, justification of the view that 'open' editing works, but the article was available for months and had been repeated in two other sources, so how long is it before false or erroneous information on less notable persons or issues is discovered? In some case perhaps never.

In another case, one of the leading figures in the development of 'podcasting' edited the article on the subject to remove information about another person who was instrumental in developing the concept, thereby giving himself a bigger role than might have been justified.

I guess that Wikipedia is going to have to introduce better control over the submission of information—it is not for nothing that scholarly journals have peer review.