Landing somewhere between “Just what are those crazy kids up to now?” and “Alien ambassadors may not be as dangerous as previously thought,” The New York Times Magazine discovers Wikipedia. The article, about Wikipedians’ intense efforts to police breaking news on the site for accuracy and neutrality, is actually more even-handed than usual, if only because the writer is striving mightily to snicker behind his hand. I can’t help but think that for-pay journalism will be much improved when the last of these habitually off-line antiques are put out to pasture.
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Matt Carter says:
The NYT Magazine has been doing occasional, thoughtful articles about Wikipedia since the site launched in 2001.
The latest story did a nice job of providing a behind-the-scenes look at the effort that goes into trying to make the content on Wikipedia neutral.
Let’s not forget that when you’re talking about a story like the Virginia Tech shootings (which the piece focussed on) almost all of the source material for a Wikipedia article comes from the “news industry.” If you watch the way an article like that evolves on Wikipedia, it’s not unlike the way a story is cobbled together by the Associated Press. There’s just a hell of a lot more people and sources contributing.
Nevertheless, if we could see a running, side-by-side comparison of the Wikipedia article and the AP’s reports as both evolved, my money would be on AP to provide the most “immediate, accurate, authoritative and unbiased” story.
I love Wikipedia, and I thought the explanation one of their editors gave as to why neutrality is important was great. To paraphrase, it was something like “objective information is useful, biased information is not.” Something that seems lost on many bloggers.
What can get lost in this “just the facts, ma’am” approach is context, and some of the details that reporters sometimes provide to put you on the scene (quotes from survivors, etc). I would be the first to agree we often get too much of the latter and not enough of the former from the press, especially TV.
Wikipedia articles can also be a little clunky and lack a single “voice” when they are written by committee.
July 2, 2007 — 6:20 pm
Greg Swann says:
Very interesting comments. Here’s what I was thinking when I read the NYT Magazine article. I go to the New York Times when something sends me there — a link or one of my Googlebots. I go to Wikipedia.org at least ten times a day, often much more.
July 7, 2007 — 12:58 pm