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THE TRUTHS AND LIES OF WiktWorLD THE TRUTHS Lies AND WikiWor_D The free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is a democratically decided database that has been open to abuse, but the advent of WikiScanner has uncovered a web of deceit and disinformation. ince its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown as the online phenomenon that apparently allows the truth to be managed democratically; but over the past year it has also been exposed as a real-life "Ministry of Truth". Worse: people have been arrested and terrorised due to incorrect information being posted on this free Internet encyclopaedia. Wikipedia watching On 15 December 2005, various media sources reported that the open-access encyclopaedia Wikipedia was about as accurate as the online Encyclopaedia Britannica, at least for science-based articles. This was the result of a study by the journal Nature, which chose scientific articles from both encyclopaedias across a wide range of topics and sent them for peer review. The reviewers found just eight serious errors. Of those, four came from each site. They also found a series of factual errors, omissions or misleading statements. All told, there were 123 such problems with Britannica and 162 with Wikipedia. That in itself is a staggering conclusion, which translates as averaging out to 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia, or three versus four mistakes. That, of course, is not "as accurate" as the newspapers reported—thus showing misleading statements in the newspapers’ headlines. Still, is Wikipedia's score proof positive that the Internet is indeed more than just a bundle of conspiracy theory and pornography sites, and that the combined efforts of Internet users actually work to create a knowledge base? Perhaps. Wikipedia allows anyone—anyone—to go in and add, change or delete anything in the encyclopaedia. Wikipedia is therefore an exercise in trust: it hopes that its users come there with the best of intentions. The site is funded through the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and in 2006 had an estimated budget of "about a million dollars". It was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, the latter who left his co-creation behind in 2002 and stated in October 2006 that he was going to start a competitor that would allow for more peer-reviewed entries. Trust cannot be guaranteed and hence, at best, Wikipedia comes with a few blemishes. George W. Bush's biography was so frequently changed—often to include name calling and "personalised opinions" on his policies—that his and a small number of other entries had to be locked and thus only authorised users were allowed to edit them. Innocent enough; perhaps even funny. But a more suspicious case occurred in late 2005 when, for four months, Wikipedia included an anonymously written article linking former journalist John Seigenthaler to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. His Wikipedia entry stated: "For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." And: "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984. He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter." None of this was true, or even alleged, outside of WikiWorld. Seigenthaler thought that at the age of 78 he was beyond surprise or hurt, but he had obviously not counted on Wikipedia. Worse, his case exposed a further flaw, as Wikipedia's information feeds automatically into Reference.com and Answers.com, whose computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from Wikipedia without any checks, thus spreading the lies further onto other sites. In this instance, "trust" failed and perhaps we should not blame Wikipedia directly. by Philip Coppens © 2007 PO Box 13722 North Berwick EH39 4WB United Kingdom Email: info@philipcoppens.com Website: http://www. philipcoppens.com PO Box 13722 North Berwick EH39 4WB United Kingdom Email: info@philipcoppens.com Website: http://www. philipcoppens.com NEXUS = 11 by Philip Coppens © 2007 OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2007 www.nexusmagazine.com