Wikipedia not only is a reliable source
of information, it also is a source of knowledge that stimulates students to
learn more. As Linklater (2003) states in “Reference Books? Give me
Wikipedia,” by using Wikipedia students “learn that they have a gateway to
knowledge unprecedented in the history of man, and that this opens up access to
sources of information that they might never have glimpsed as they struggled
with poorly equipped libraries unhelpful staff and unimaginative lecturers,
then they will realise that, far from blunting curiosity, it (wikipedia) sharpens
it.”
Wikipedia is a reliable source of information because of the
active commitment of its editors to maintain quality of the content available on
the site. The 4.2 million entries that can be freely accessed on wikipedia were
not, contrary to a common misconception arising from the seemingly ‘open
access’ to wikipdia, entries are not written or edited by its millions of users.
In fact, most of the entries are edited by a small group of active and committed
editors (Swartz, 2006) who
scrutinize and monitor the content with their watchful eyes. In "Who Writes Wikipedia?" Swartz (2006) quotes
Wale who had found that “the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4%
of all the edits." In “The Wizard
of Wiki” Larry Smith interviews Richard Farmbrough, one of the active editors of
wikipedia for whom eliminating errors from wikipedia is an ongoing passion. Similarly, Priedhorsky et al., (2007) in "Creating, Destroying, and Restoring Value in Wikipedia" showed that “1/10th of 1% of editors contributed
nearly half of the value” of wikipedia. This finding is consistent with other
research which found that a small number of users post a large proportion of
messages on other online social sites: discussion lists and blogs (Marks, 2003;
Whitteker, 1998). It is also worth noting that any antisocial behaviour such as
vandalism of wikipedia entries or posting of misleading or erroneous entries is
immediately repaired. Pridhordky et
al., (2007) found that “42% of damage is repaired almost immediately, i.e.,
before it can confuse, offend, or mislead anyone.” This is done by human
editors, automated scripts, and with wikipedia bots (see Wikipedia: Bot
Policy). These research findings substantiate the fact that wikipedia is, in
fact, a reliable source of information as its content validity and credibility are
carefully scrutinized by a small group of active and committed expert editors.
Having said that, it is also worth pointing out that the
widespread accessibility of wikipedia and the possibility it carries to allow
anybody regardless of his/her status and academic qualifications to become one
of the active and committed editors/experts expands the traditional form of “peer-reviewing”
done by a closely-knit circle of experts nominated by other experts to do the
job. This new opportunity for knowledge sharing and knowledge scrutinizing
afforded by wikipedia constitutes a major shift in allowing many who otherwise
would not have access to “peer-reviewing” to become the watchful editors of
online knowledge.
