Let the reader beware

06-05-2009

by Ralph Averbuch

Fake Wikipedia entry proves even the pros can easily be taken in.

There's no denying that Wikipedia, the free community-maintained encyclopedia, is an impressive example of how a voluntarily maintained service can take on and even beat commercially backed competitors. But recent media reports highlight the challenges and dangers such an approach has to face. Despite the best attempts of voluntary editors to police updates to entries, a 22 year old Dublin student managed to add a fictitious quote which was then picked up by a variety of print titles. They then proceeded to re-publish the reference as genuine. This highlights the failure of traditional media to fact-check. Clearly the newspapers which used Wikipedia as a resource didn't take the important step of then cross-checking the material with at least one other independent source. It's a potential problem which will always occur and this most recent report won't be the last. But it highlights just how willing we are, however experienced, to tend towards believing material presented to us on the web. It's the same human tendency which makes phishing and spam scams such a part of online life. So caveat emptor and don't believe the hype.

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