April 10 - Peer Review Works, I Think

When I started this blog, it was on the premise that there would be enough material appearing on the front page of Wikipedia on a daily basis to fuel the prosaic muse. what actually happened was that I found interesting (to me) material all over the place. I do still check out Wikipedia every day, though, and often use it for fact-checking.

One of the things I've noticed is that Wikipedia is a target for vandals. This is most evident when viewing the article of the day. Chances are good, when viewing that page, that it will be littered with obscene graffiti and often have material destroyed or seriously altered. Such is what can happen when anyone can edit the articles.

What is particularly heartening is that other folks monitor and reverse the damage pretty much as fast as it occurs. Try it some time. Go to Wikipedia, navigate to the article of the day and press refresh and watch the page change on a minute by minute basis. It is good to see that there are at least as many folks out there who are willing to put as much volunteer effort into the public good as there are people seeking to diminish it.

It is good to be mindful that Wikipedia can contain bias because of this public editing. Encyclopaedia Brittanica can contain bias, too, and there you have no opportunity to identify or correct it. At least with Wikipedia, you have a good possibility of most positions being represented in a given article. In fact, what one often finds in Wikipedia is that sections which are likely to contain opinion or bias are so labeled.

I have been pleased and impressed with Wikipedia's accuracy, general lack of bias, shear breadth of information and demonstrable resistance to malice.