http://www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/pa....tuftsdaily.com

 

One example of this problem may be the recent Wikipedia scandal involving U.S Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass).

 

According to a press release by Wiki-news administrator Wayne Faewyc, "One of Meehan's summer interns altered the congressman's profile on the Wikipedia Web site to remove an old promise that he would limit his service to four terms."

 

According to Political Science Lecturer Michael Goldman, who teaches "Media, Politics and the Law," the Web site allows for the possibility of biased information being passed off as true fact.

 

"In the case of Congressman Meehan they were taking out material that was negative and placing in material that was positive," Goldman said. "Because anyone can access it, you are really getting the information from a bad source."

 

Also Brittanica hits back after a study said that Wikipedia had many mistakes, but it was about as many as the historical encyclopedia series.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,26...2100017,00.html

 

Nature claimed that its research comparing Britannica and Wikipedia, which is written by an army of online volunteers and is open to anybody to edit, found "that Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries" and that "the difference in accuracy was not particularly great".

 

However, Britannica responded that "almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies, to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading".

 

The American-based company behind the publication said that several inaccuracies cited by Nature were in fact correct, and that Nature’s figures actually showed that Wikipedia had one-third more errors than Britannica.

 

It added that "Britannica undergoes continuous revision and fact checking" and in a barbed attack on Wikipedia’s reliance on volunteers, "regardless of knowledge or qualifications", highlighted Britannica’s ties to "thousands of contributors and advisers around the world – scholars and experts all".

Right there is the problem with any and all of the community edited information sites. But since anybody can edit anything in/out, I think banning the Hill alone is going to do little to improve information content.

 

I think Wikipedia is a great information experiment. And I think the massive peer review that happens by nature of what the site is eventually does a good job of ensuring that the entries become increasingly convergent with the truth.

follow the money . . .