How accurate is Wikipedia?
“How accurate is Wikipedia?” is a controversial question; many would argue this point, and have argued this point, over and over and over ad nauseam (until you’re sick of it). Wikipedia’s structure in and of itself allows anyone to edit it in almost any way they choose. If I want to change the “elephant” page to say that “The worldwide population of elephants has tripled in the past three months” (an obviously false statement, popularized by comedian Stephen Colbert), then I am technically free to do so. This prima facie (“until proven otherwise”, literally “first appearance”) evidence would seem to suggest that Wikipedia is unreliable as a whole, that it cannot be trusted in any respect because anyone can modify it to say untrue and even ridiculous things. Such an interpretation is ultimately misguided; while theoretically any article might have been vandalized a few seconds ago to say inappropriate things, the community that runs Wikipedia generally does a good job of p
Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has easily become one of the biggest reference websites around. It has over 10 million articles in 250 languages, attracting 680 million visitors a year. But who is creating the information many take for granted? Almost any question you can think of can now be answered thanks to Wikipedia. But where do these answers come from? Click on any article’s history, and you can see that absolutely anyone can edit Wikipedia: even you. Those that become addicted to editing Wikipedia are called ‘Wikipedians’. Wikipedians that live in new Zealand are called ‘Kiwipedians’. “I’ve always been interested in teaching and putting my own ideas across in a way people can see and learn from them,” says Kiwipedian James Dignan. Mr Dignan lives in Dunedin and has a MSc in Psychology. He has edited Wikipedia so much in the last four years, he has been upgraded to an administrator – one of five in New Zealand. His interests lie in everything from science fiction to old so
