Blog Insights: The cult of Wikipedia

What bloggers are saying about the latest in information technology



There are creations in the world of technology that incite followers to go beyond appreciating the creation for what it is, and turn it into something god-like. Take Apple computers for example. Mind you, I'm not trying to criticize Apple here -- but many Apple enthusiasts I have talked to get way too excited about comparing Apples to PCs, and declare the machines to be far more perfect than they are. That's largely because Apple has created, through its very competent marketing department, a perception of coolness.

And so too, this thing called Wikipedia has been turned into something greater than it should be. Wikipedia is of course, a useful collection of information, and a good starting point for research. However, no serious scholar would accept it as a final destination for research. Wikipedia entries can't by any stretch of the imagination be seen as definitive. However, Wikipedians tend to believe that the collective nature of this creation, which visionary Jaron Lanier delightfully called "digital Maoism," makes it somehow superior to other bodies of research that are written by credentialed professionals, supervised by editors, and vetted by fact-checkers. It is not.

An Associated Press article this week highlighted the aversion Wikipedians have to anybody making money. In fact, the old saw "The Internet wants to be free" is meaningless and perhaps even harmful, given that the Internet has achieved what it has today largely through commercial effort. We benefit when hardware companies come up with better switches and when telecom companies create faster infrastructures -- but those companies do what they do to make money, and for no other reason. That said, the hubbub this week surrounds Microsoft who wanted to pay a writer to repair inaccuracies in technical articles that appeared on Wikipedia.

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