Wikipedia deserves respect

Wikipedia logo has Kannada alphabet in it!

When was the last time anyone of us went to the nearest library to refer some books... Can’t remember?! When was the last time you searched for information online? A few minutes ago?

When was the last time anyone of us went to the nearest library to refer some books... Can’t remember?! When was the last time you searched for information online? A few minutes ago?

All of us search for information everyday for different needs: students for their curricular subjects, housewives for recipes, market researchers for industry reports, journalists for background information. If we are searching for a definition or background information of a particular subject, most probably Google results will show Wikipedia entries on the top of the page and we all end up reading that entry.

I first read a Wikipedia page way back in 2002 during my first job as a print correspondent. I have been totally in awe of this amazing model of user contributed collaborative method of information collection and dissemination. I wondered how people who otherwise do not share information among friends can help build such a vast database!

Today, Wikipedia is ranked among the top ten global websites (Alexa) and has an estimated 365 million readers worldwide. Despite such popularity and regular usage by millions of people, I have constantly heard my friends complain about the reliability of user collaborative information. However, none of these friends ever told me that they have stopped checking Wikipedia for information. Their standard refrain is there is no alternative!

Actually there are alternatives. Encyclopædia Britannica is a trustworthy source of information which all of us used during our school days. Earlier it had a restricted access and all articles were updated once a year by a team of experts. Now after facing serious threat from Wikipedia, it is freely available and allows user submitted content as well. There are other sources of info: just search for “history of India”, and you will get a choice of links such as Indianchild.com, mapsofindia.com, About.com, and even BBC and CIA!

However, you will find that there is no sign of Encyclopaedia Britannica in that Google search. Why? Simple, Google search engine ranks any website based on the content quality and visitor appeal. So the more visitors a website gets, the higher its ranking. So despite all the hue and cry about expert written and peer reviewed content, nobody seem to bother about Encyclopedia Britannica.

Despite all its usefulness and accuracy in information, Wikipedia has not gained respect among people. I wonder Why? People rarely make an effort to check the ‘Discussion’ page behind every Wiki page to see if there has been too many edits or any vandalism (now, where to find the ‘Discussion’ page!). None of us ever make an effort to verify Wiki’s information with other websites and see if there is a bias or variation. None of us make an effort to create a Wiki page on a subject just to verify if anyone messes up the content.

Way back in 2005, reputed scientific journal, Nature compared both Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica to find that the accuracy and error levels are similar. So where does distrust originate... Is it because we never trust anything created by a group of amateurs... Do we have the notion that only experts in a field should have a say in anything... Or is it because we feel if something is open to debate, it means it is debatable.

It strikes me that this distrust originates somewhere deeper. Being open for debate is the fundamental difference between religion and science. Just because Isaac Newton gave the scientific law for motion and the ‘theory of mechanics’, it does not become the absolute universal truth. Another scientist like Einstein can disprove it by propounding another ‘theory of relativity’. However, in religion everything is constant and unquestionable!

Anyway, let me not digress into another debatable topic. Here is my appeal to readers – please do not question the veracity of Wikipedia in general. If you have doubts about a particular fact, please go to the ‘Discussion’ page and post a comment about it. Please make a contribution of at least Rs.1000 once in a year, since Wikipedia does not have any advertising revenue. By the way, I have never seen anyone complain about the absence of ads on Wikipedia! Please check Encyclopedia Britannica for a change!

Text: Levine Lawrence

- Factfile -

Britannica's Doomed Plan To Take On Wikipedia

Who Does What On Wikipedia?

Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica and Nature: a response