Wikepedia: A Matter of Accuracy

A few weeks ago I edited content on Wikipedia for the first time and I was really excited by the thought of being able to contribute to and help build-up bodies of knowledge. After the initial excitement died-down, I started thinking about how accurate a lot of the content on the site was. I had done a lot of (ahem ... ) research on my topic and contributed the knowledge in good faith. However, how true is this of other contributors out there? I had re-checked my contributions later on, only to find out that they were still there. So, it could either be that my facts were checked and found to be correct or that they were never checked at all. This issue of verifying the accuracy of contributions made to Wikipedia is the subject of this recent New York Times article and AP news story.

Yesterday I wrote about how blogging was changing journalism as we know it. Blogging, and other technoology tools, are also changing how knowledge is created and disseminated. We need to think more about what standards are applied to this knowledge creation process.