Wikipedia

The man pictured above is Virgil Griffith. He is a graduate student at California Institute of Technology. He has taken a look into the reliability if the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to find out who exactly is changing the information you read. Now anyone can change or add info on anything that is on Wikipedia, the problem is that instead of doing this for accuracy purposes, some are changing information to make them or their companies look better, and flat out lying about things.

It's amazing that it is possible to track down the IP address of the computer that made the changes to the Wiki article. By using this technology, you can find out if the changes were made from an individual at home on his computer, or from the office of the president of a major corporation. For instance they found the makers of the electronic voting machines (used in presidential elections) Diebold deleted several paragraphs expressing concern about the machines reliability. Walmart also changed a few words around in their encyclopedia page to change the meaning of their wages to the complete opposite!

So what does this mean about the accuracy of the site? Well, like the Wired reporter said in the podcast, of course some people are going to be scared off form using the site to post or read information. But I don't think they should be. I think Wiki is a good tool to use for your everyday questions. Now it should always be kept in mind that the site can be altered by anyone, and therefore the information you read cannot always be guaranteed 100%. I also feel that with growing technology more advances can be made to find out who is making the changes and to keep them from false-ifying the entries.

Overall I think a lot of people have became more wary of using Wikipedia, and that's not a bad thing. As a student, I'm never allowed to use the encyclopedia for educational purposes. Because the information can be changed by anyone, anytime, it's just too risky to use it as fact sometimes. But I believe that when used and monitored properly, the site can be an amazing tool! It enables people to get online and share the information. Imagine taking a room and filling it full of people who all know at least one fact about photosynthesis. Those people together could tell you everything about it by the time you heard every individual thought! This is what Wiki does, allows people to come together with their knowledge to share with one another in order to educate the masses. It's amazing when you stop to think about it...