Open The Dialogue

Back on 12/4, I’d posted about the trust level we should assign to a source like Wikipedia, and how it should be used when one is doing research, especially research on the Internet. As the story about John Siegenthaler’s Wikipedia entry continues to get more and more traffic, the suggestion I referenced in that original post from Rex Hammock becomes more and more important – just as anything you find on the Internet might be very helpful to your research, and super easy to find, it’s no replacement for double checking or followup. Do your due diligence just as you would if you didn’t have a Wikipedia at your hands.

Liz Donovan writes about the NYT article in yesterday’s paper where Katherine Seelye details how the originator of the harassing entry of Mr. Siegenthaler was tracked down, and the fact that after an apology, the culprit has resigned from his job at a delivery company.

Now, don’t take this as an overly harsh criticism of Wikipedia or me saying that it shouldn’t be regularly used – it is, it should be, and I do it myself – but when Liz states that “…bad information will always be found out and corrected. That’s Wikipedia’s goal and so far, the system works.” that this isn’t completely correct. This article was up with the mistaken information from sometime in May until September. Sure, it will be found out, but this particular instance proved that “bad” information could last months on Wikipedia without someone changing it. What does this mean? Well, just like anything else, caveat emptor. Don’t just go quoting something as “I found it in Wikipedia” unless you tracked down the original source(s) or looked elsewhere as well. It’s not perfect, and there’s no telling whether it will ever be – but for the moment, just be smart about how you use it.

Last week, while speaking at a local newspaper in New Jersey, I was asked about the level of trust that should be given to Wikipedia. This is something that’s come up quite a few times, with most people not believing that you should ever believe things that are “generated” by individuals on the Internet, especially when no one is being paid for the work. Generally I explain that people typically use multiple sources, but that Wikipedia is a pretty good “one stop shop” to find out about just about anything. This morning, Dave Winer points to a great post by Rex Hammock about how to properly use – or reference – Wikipedia.

Wondering about the value of Wikipedia? Rebecca Blood links to an item in The Guardian where some experts take a look at topics covered in their respective fields, and assign a score to the items they reviewed.

PaidContent’s Rafat Ali has details on Wikisphere’s venture capital funding announcement, where the firm has reportedly grabbed $5.25 million to work with. As Ali mentions, Socialtext was one of the first big names (perhaps the first, though you can never be sure) in the space to get serious backing to get the wiki into more hands, so this is still pretty big news. Just like blogging tools become a content management tool (printing press, if you prefer) for the masses, the wiki is a collaborative tool that enables everyone from large companies to you and I to create big-scale sites with some fantastic functionality – handling everything from a new encyclopedia that can be edited and read by all, to perhaps remaking the underutilized corporate Intranet.

On Friday morning, CNET News.com’s Dawn Kawamoto wrote about SAP’s headfirst dive in with a big chunk of the $4 million in capital investment for Socialtext, the wiki software firm. If anyone was still holding out on whether the wiki was a strong tool for business use before, then this should most certainly be the wake-up call that they were looking for. Anything that makes collaboration and information sharing easier and faster is a no brainer in my book. Organizations are using wiki for everything from corporate Intranets to brainstorming parking lots and beyond, and the $850k that SAP put into the kitty is proof positive that the technology – and whatever it ultimately evolves into – is here to stay for a while.