1.Two Corante contributors continue the discussion around recent controversies surrounding Wikipedia today. Neville Hobson updates us on the recent scandal related to the character assassination of John Seigenthaler, who also happens to be the founder of the First Amendment Center,...

2.Wikipedia is generally accurate in its coverage of non-controversial topics, because the social editing concept works well when people have little interest in pushing a point of view. But Wikipedia is much more likely to include new and controversial topics, and this content is more prone to deliberate manipulation or simple bias.

Wikipedia's ease of access and breadth of coverage make it pretty seductive, but I think you need to take along big grains of salt if you're looking up entries where reality may be in the eye of the beholder (for example, see the 'discussion' section behind the article on Intelligent Design).

3.True enough, Allen, but Wikipedia also does a pretty good job of adding disclaimers to content that is in dispute. It's regretable that the Intelligent Design item is not so disclaimed, although it is deemed "controversial." Wikipedia is also new, by many standards, and I've no doubt some of these issues will shake out as it matures. There's another issue worth looking at -- take a look at the comments to a post from Neville Hobson -- and feel free to comment either here or on Neville's blog (which I'm following):

http://www.nevon.net/nevon/2005/12/ft_tolerate_som.html#comments

4.I love wikipedia, even when it's wrong.

Check out this joint wikipedia/google search thingy
I made for a home page.

5.Nice job, Moose. Are you familiar with the search engine Clusty? (http://www.clusty.com) It lets you select tabs for the same search term, including Wikipedia, blogs, news, and others. Its primary search categorizes what it finds into folders of similar content. Excellent and underrated search engine.

6.?It is worth tolerating a little bit of libel, for the greater good.? What a great line. And I agree that it?s a critical concept if online free speech is going to mean anything. But I also think the average person getting information and opinion online needs to develop new skills to deal with it all.

I think the fundamental issue ? in the Wikipedia debate and other online communications ? is that our societal expectations about credibility and communication ethics haven?t caught up with the new reality. We need to become information consumers rather than media consumers.

Anyone connected with the media business knows that, ?They wouldn?t print it if it wasn?t true.? is hogwash, but it?s a lot simpler to be a media consumer if you just make that assumption. It?s not true, but it?s true enough that you can usually get away with it.

Unfortunately, some of that automatic assumption of credibility has now leaked over into online communication, where it?s a significantly more dubious proposition. For better or worse, there?s no media institution standing between us and raw information and opinion.

That?s why I say we need to become information consumers. As individuals, we need to take on the job of evaluating the sources of our information, considering whether those sources have an axe to grind, and confirming the information through some other source.

That?s why I draw a distinction between controversial and non-controversial material in Wikipedia. The contributors on controversial subjects often have an axe to grind, so it?s wise to consider the subject matter when deciding how likely it is that a neutral point of view has actually made it onto the page.

For that matter, it?s even more important with the blogosphere. If you go there for information and don?t bring your critical faculties along, you?re going to wind up believing an awful lot of stuff that isn?t true.