Issues With a Wiki World
As the Internet continues to grow and the free flow of information continues to ease, the problem of human errors and bias is increasingly entering our world. Blogs and wikis are already suffering, and the problem is intensifying as both media become more popular and information is being recycled by more and more people (the retweet phenomenon).
As Wikipedia correctly identifies: "Anyone can change an article in Wikipedia, which means that it's difficult to say whether something written in Wikipedia is true or correct." This issue is reflected in the arena of new journalists, where news sources are the first to report something and often sacrifice information integrity in the name of Breaking News. With news providers focusing more on being the first to receive a story, fact-checking will inevitably fade into the background, creating an informational economy where nobody knows which messages are valid because of fakes or inaccuracies.
The problem of bias is the greatest since the beginning of journalism. Put simply, one's own beliefs and ideologies flow into their work, especially in the world of journalism. This issue is particularly noticeable in technology-related news as journalists distort and in some cases even hide information due to their company preferences and consumer loyalty. This problem is spreading beyond the Internet and there is no solution outside of rigorous fact checking, but the decentralized and deregulated nature of the Internet has created a breeding ground for this kind of behavior.
Finally, the censorship of information threatens to further affect the purity of information on the Internet. As can be seen from the incident with Jeff Gerstmann and Gamespot, information can be bought and influenced by money, and opinions that conflict with those of the highest bidder can be deleted.
In such an environment, the question of who and what sources can be trusted is difficult. The wiki world is full of brilliant ideas and breaking news, but you always have to know what's going on behind the screen.
