DOES ITS AN UNDENIABLE POPULARITY MAKE WIKIPEDIA “ENCYCLOPEDIA”?
WAS THE WIKIPEDIA REALLY CREATED FOR CYCLOPEDIC MATTER?
If you are a journalist, academician or scientist you always need to have suspicious approach. We need to question facts. Otherwise the visible part of Iceberg’ may mislead our conclusion. The history of “Truths” or its opposite way “Truthless” lies down through the creation of human being. Describing the these two terms getting harder than ever in the condition of 21.century due to intensive Disinformation. In my opinion disinformation is translated to another word recently. As Steven Colbert describes, “Truhthiness”, the term defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.
We are as a millennium society have witnessed the revolution of Information Technologies in last decade. The most essential part of this revolution is self constructed, instructed and controlled Online Media. Online media have brought wide alternatives. Moreover it has created substitutionary media environment due to an online newspapers, blogs, social networking sites etc. People have started to read online newspapers instead of reading hard copies, to chat online instead of talking on the phone, to talk online instead of meeting in somewhere, to search on Google or Wikipedia instead of giving an eye on encyclopedia.
“FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA”
Of course we praise for what Wikipedia provides us. In fact nobody has an full-objection for blessings and contributions of online media tools to our daily lives. However the case what we are discussing influences all the society due to its technological power and attractiveness. As an our case study, Wikipedia’s core aim is providing a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet according to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. This is the magic word for all online media tools. FREE! He adds that Wikipedia is a lot more than a equal website also wants empowering people everywhere to have the information they need to make a good decision. It seems too idealistic isn’t it.
Let’s look the other features of Wikipedia?
According to All Headlines News, Wikipedia surpassed the 2-million article mark on September 9, as of October 8, 2007 Wikipedia’s English-language edition had over 2, 039, 985 articles. As of September 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.29 million articles in 253 language. Wikipedia’s articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Due to Wikipedia’s open nature, critics have questioned its reliability and accuracy. But because it is constantly updated, Wikipedia is also a source for rumors, a target of vandalism and a hub fornews and other internet phenomenon, with 6.8 million registered users worldwide.
“CONTROVERSIES ON WIKIPEDIA”
There have been many controversy and criticisms on Wikipedia’s concept. It has been criticized for being open to editing by anyone, being usefulness as a reference, it’s anti-elitist approach, systemic bias in coverage, systemic bias in perspective, privacy concerns, prediction on failure, threat to traditional publishers, quality of writing, anonymous editing, copy write issues, difficulty of fact-checking, using a dubious sources, exposure vandals such as John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy.
Moreover there are many criticism also made by contributors such as common complain “Flame Wars”, view of editing, dominant liberal bias, censorship, administrator actions, level of debate, male dominations, lack of credential verification.
“WE DON’T TAKE A STAND IN CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES”
Jimmy Wales describes their control mechanism as: “We do not talk a lot about truth and objectivity the reason for this is if we say we are only gonna write the truth about some topics that does not do us better good figuring out what to write because I don’t agree with you about what is the truth. We have this jargon term of neutrality which has long history with community. Anytime there is a controversial issue wikipedia self should not take a stand on the issue. We should report what reputable parties have said about it.“
Wales adds that Wikipedia has diverse contributors in terms of political, religious, cultural backgrounds and aims to keep everyone on Wikipedia’s Neutral Policy. I think this is the most crucial point of the controversies. There are several cases where Wikipedia has failed and I think the quantity of failures will increase in the future. Here some examples:
Mercedes hunts for Wikipedia vandal
Japan Officials Warned Over Wikipedia
Qatar’s Contributions Curtailed at Wikipedia
“DOES ITS UNDENIABLE POPULARITY MAKE WIKIPEDIA “ENCYCLOPEDIA?”
For the conditions and controversies that I have listed above we can’t count on Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. If we are talking about public enlightenment through informations we have to stand for seeking truth and being an objective. Wikipedia can not reject that they are not one of the major media tools in today. If they think wikipedia has a suitability as an encyclopedia they need to have fundamental transformation from “everyone can edit” to “only experts can edit”. So I am answering the question: “We should trust expert-led encyclopedia no matter what Wikipedia provides easiest way to find an information.Due to Wikipedia should be open to just verified “experts”.
I might be a dinosaur because I am defending this idea but it seems the only way to enduring objectivity and preventing “Truthiness”.
