Wikipedia is not the answer

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Wikipedia is at its core, a bit shrewd and unreliable. Anyone with a log-in can peruse the pages and fix what they believe to be errors. Having more eyes to look over something is considered a group-editing session, but it does not always work that way. There might be a few dedicated people that are on top of things, but a lot of what you find on this wannabe-encyclopedia page is question marks.

credibility.JPG

The same can be said about citizen journalism. There are question marks about citizen journalism and how it will be used, but one of their success stories so far is fact checking. Little Green Footballs helped blow open the Rathergate case and exposed the Reuters sham. Most citizen journalists use the blog as their forum, but there are new sites dedicated to giving citizen journalists a forum and organizations willing to pay for the work of citizen journalists.

But you must be careful in what you claim to be the holy grail, because any dumbshit with a digital camera, editing software and some time can post his or her thoughts. What seperates qualityfrom stupidity is credibility.

Wikipedia is still searching for its credibility and citizen journalism has gained some confidence, but neither entity has reached superstar status yet. With their credentials still up in the air, Wikipedia is not the place to look for answers. Jimmy Wales said it best when he concluded that no one should link to Wikipedia.

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This page contains a single entry by James Pinick published on September 29, 2006 9:20 AM.

Who wants false info? was the previous entry in this blog.

The great debate on Wikipedia is the next entry in this blog.

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