I recently read up on the controversy involving Wikipedia's biography of journalist John Siegenthaler Sr. Jumping from link to link, I came upon the work of Daniel Brandt, the creator of the site "Wikipedia Watch." Brandt has posted a rather extensive critique of Wikipedia (along with his critiques of Google and Yahoo) in a number of forums. His recent involvement in the Siegenthaler biography affair has now placed him in the forefront of a very public and candid discussion of the problems presented by the Wikipedia model. He shared his critique and his suggestions for improvements in a recent CNET interview.

Brandt certainly has a lot of valid points in his criticisms of Wikipedia and its founder Jimmy Wales. But the underlying concept of Wikipedia still merits some defense.  Regular readers of this site have probably noticed that I frequently link to Wiki articles in the "Further Reading" postscripts to articles.  Wikipedia is even included in our site's "Web Essentials" links as well.

Somewhere between the hype and the critique, surely there is some kind of happy medium to be found. At the end of the day, web sites that specialize in the dissemination of information require some kind of centralized regulation of content to maximize accountability and accuracy. Wikipedia boasts that it is "the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit" but in its present form, it is more accurate to say that it's "the online encyclopedia that anyone can vandalize" Not only does the Siegenthaler row prove this, but there have been a host of other controversies over entries on topics like Islam and the Republic of Macedonia (At various times throughout the past few years, the latter two articles have had to be locked so as to prevent vandalism by disgruntled parties). So simply assuming that everyone shares the common goal of building a free, open-source encyclopedia is more than a bit naive—This line of thinking actually borders on irresponsibility.

I once tried to explain the idea of "content control" (that is, having a human being act as moderator or editor of a web site's content) to a peace group that I was working with a while back. During a period in which the organization's web site was without an administrator, there was a massive influx of obscene and inappropriate postings on a "forum" section of their site. They asked me to remove the offending content and to try to prevent the problem from occurring again. The problem, however, was not merely in the design of the page, but in its concept as well. This particular page was intended as a bulletin board of sorts at which anyone could post notices about upcoming peace events or related matters. So the door was wide open for all sorts of garbage to be posted and their was no human being that was serving as an administrator or editor of content. I cleaned up the site and "sealed up" all the open doors throughout their site.  I also tried to explain to the group's organizers it was somewhat dangerous to operate their web site in the manner that they had chosen, explaining that there were all sorts of liability issues to consider. However,  they were basically adamant that the flow of information on their site had to be uninhibited and uncensored.  Our collaboration was rather short-lived.

When you get right down to it, the Wiki concept is certainly with some merit, despite its many problems.  To quote Michael Shermer, "...babies and bathwater come to mind."  Many of Wikipedia's articles are very interesting and they often serve as a good "jumping off point" when one is delving into a topic for the first time.  But Wikipedia is not the ideal place to research controversial subjects or complex issues.  As noted above, Wikipedia is a haven for inaccuracies which are sometimes inadvertent and sometimes intentional—or even malicious. It's okay to remain cautiously optimistic about the potential benefits that an improved Wikipedia might someday bring to the Internet community.   But in order to really get there, Mr. Wales needs to take a long, hard look at how he runs his shop.

Further Reading
from Daniel Brandt:    NameBase.org      WikipediaWatch
see also:  A false Wikipedia 'biography' by John Siegenthaler