HOW DANGEROUS IS WIKIPEDIA?

I have an admission to make: I have used Wikipedia for serious research. And in all the years I’ve been doing it, I’ve never really felt as if I’ve been led astray.

But – a large but – I only use it for research in science or computing. Just this morning I sat at Aroma café after synagogue, discussing a certain aspect of quantum cryptology with Dr. Steven Wiesner. Steve is known as the father of quantum cryptology. But as he’s gotten older, the field has passed him by.

He wanted to look up a term, so I typed the term into the Jerusalem Post toolbar –which I discussed in a previous column. The search gives several choices, one of which is ‘encyclopedia’.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that consists of nearly 1 million articles and has been, in large part, created by users. It has information on virtually any topic you can imagine, and—here’s where it gets interesting— if it doesn’t and you know something about the topic, you can create the first entry (as long as you become a site member) and basically define that subject for the Wikipedia visitors.

Wikipedia editors might consider this a "stub"—something that has yet to be perused by the Wikipedia editors and doesn’t contain enough information to be considered an article. Moreover, each article or record is not frozen in time. Instead, it can be added to and edited by other Wikipedia visitors—that is the very definition of a "wiki."

The premise is that working together we can create an accurate online encyclopedic reference. Aside from the way this encyclopedia is built, the other big difference between it and your more traditional desk-bound volumes is that Wikipedia can include anything. So, random technology personalities such as Patrick Norton (of DL.TV) are in there. (I’m guessing fans entered it, and then Norton cleaned up his article.)

However, using Wikipedia for social, economic or political research calls for caution. The Chase/Seigenthaler incident is an example of why.

According to CNN, as a joke, a Nashville man named Brian Chase created a biography entry for John Seigenthaler Sr. that described the USA Today founder as having lived in the former Soviet Union for more than a decade and, prior to that, being linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Aside from the fact that Chase, who lost his job as a delivery-service manager because of the hoax, didn’t know that people actually use Wikipedia for serious research, the ease with which he created and entered a fictitious biography and the way it simply became part of the Wikipedia fabric is frightening.

Is the Chase incident an anomaly, or is all of Wikipedia suspect? My gut says the online encyclopedia is still a valuable tool, but it’s suspect like the millions of information blogs on the Web. They’re filled with user-generated posts and comments, and a blog is only as relevant and, to some extent, as true as the number of trackbacks it has.

So a highly linked blog is perceived as relevant, and merely on that basis those who link to it conclude it is "true, verifiable information." Yet as the Chase incident shows, it could be fraudulent.

Further, no one should forget that on religious, political, historical and economic issues, the article writers have an agenda.

That agenda is usually leftist.

As I mentioned once, I program for pro-Israel advocacy groups. I learned quickly by looking up Hamas, Abu Mazan, and other names and topics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that Wikipedia has a decidedly leftist bent.

In many places terrorists were described as heroes – ‘resistance fighters’. There were outright lies and rewriting of history. I have learned to stay away from Wikipedia on any topic having to do with the third world, or Islam.

Wikipedia alleges it is not designed to host opinion. It is supposed to be fact-based and accurate. If you decide to create an entry or edit one, you’ll see this admonition:
"Content must not violate any copyright and must be based on verifiable sources. By editing here, you agree to license your contributions under the GFDL."

Wikipedia refuses to acknowledge any left-wing bias – which is easy enough to find if your eyes are open. I spent hours crawling through Wikipedia this week looking for glaring errors. I found many, particularly those related to Jews, the history of Palestine, America’s role in the world, and the free market.

Granted, anything built by committee has little chance of 100 percent accuracy. But when the errors are pervasively slanted in one political direction, you can’t attribute them to random inaccuracies.

This does not damn Wikipedia. It can still be a quite useful online research tool. Just be sure your brain’s Leftist Alert switch is turned on when you log in.

Dennis Turner