Some journalists say they don't trust Wikipedia and have found the quality of the entries to be uneven in writing quality and factual accuracy. I share those concerns, but am still no less impressed by Wikipedia for several reasons. First, it has achieved an astonishing high level of overall quality, considering its massive content, in a remarkably short time. They must be doing something right. And whatever the system is, it appears to be largely self-correcting, which means that entries get better over time. They are using this new medium for information collecting and presentation innovatively and successfully if not yet perfectly. But more fundamentally, I don't trust Wikipedia any more than I trust any single source of news or information, certainly including the Encyclopedia Britannica. I always expect the latter for example to offer a conventional and authorized version of any subject it covers. From this perspective, the Britannica's sins might be worse than Wikipedia's. Their entries may be factually accurate and stylistically elegant, but disengenuous and anti-democratic. So I would double-check the Britannica against other sources, just as I would double-check something from Wikipedia or any other single source. Indeed, I've often found Britannica entries at variance with other conventional media sources such as other encyclopedias, biographies, and mainstream magazines or newspapers. Another important issue is accessibility to average educated readers, an important consideration in a democracy. Britannica entries are often minutely-detailed academic discourses that could interest only scholars. It is probably all quite accurate, yet also useless to average citizens. Bottom line, I share concerns about Wikipedia but I'm not dramatically more worried about them than any other single information source. More than that, the Internet is with us to stay, and though far from perfect appears to be pioneering a vital new information system on the Net. So it bears close attention for that reason alone. Do I harbor the hope and belief that maybe, lots of ordinary citizen volunteers can do a better job of seeing and recording the truth of society than a small handful of powerful commercial institutions to whom we retain an indisputably strong yet essentially nostalgic connection? Yes I do.
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