Be careful with Wikipedia!

Many major American newspapers quote or recommend the Wikipedia online encyclopedia ( www.wikipedia.org ).

Wikipedia is truly a phenomenon with huge data updates constantly updated and accessed about 60 million times a day.

Wikipedia currently has about 1.5 million articles (more than one third of them are English) with 195 languages ​​including Vietnamese. Not only encyclopedia, Wikipedia also opens Wiktionary (vocabulary) or Wikinews (international news) . However .

If you understand Wikipedia as a popular encyclopedia with standards like Larousse or Britannica, then it is wrong. One of the related incidents of safety and accuracy of Wikipedia happened in the middle of December 2005. Information about human rights activist and former editor-in-chief John Seigenthaler was repaired and lasted for six months before being discovered.

Since Wikipedia's 'encyclopedia' was born in 2001, many criticisms appear frequently. The idea of ​​establishing an online reference address is excellent. The Wikipedia editorial open source policy aims to continually improve materialization. When allowing people to contribute (by editing, editing content), Wikipedia can integrate huge amounts of information and is always new.

However, the above idea also has a negative side, creating permanent insecurity for users, in terms of accurate information (not to mention personal views, especially related sensitive issues Christian history). On the information about yourself, Wikipedia also recognizes the loose and secure data.

In The Guardian interview in 2004, editor-in-chief, Encyclopaedia Britannica Dale Hoiberg emphasized: Wikipedia can never rank on par with the standard encyclopedia because it does not follow some traditional principles. of compiling the encyclopedia.

Still, don't look at Wikipedia with a prejudiced eye. In terms of reference alone (not evidence), Wikipedia is a great source. In April 2004, German computer magazine C'T, after comparing 66 articles in various fields, scored as follows (scale 5): Brockhaus Premium (German encyclopedia) obtained 3.3 point; Microsoft's Encarta 3.1 points, while Wikipedia gets 3.6 points.

In an online analysis of encyclopedias, two Indiana University teachers Emigh and Herring said that ' Wikipedia improves traditional information resources, especially in strong content, such as technology or events. news '.

In addition, because of the open source factor, Wikipedia's community is superior to any online encyclopedia. In May 2004, Wikipedia was awarded the Golden Nica for Digital Communities Award by Prix Ars Electronica and the Webby Community Award (under the International Institute of Science and Digitalization; voted and awarded for the best websites). . And the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, is still respected in the US information community.

In 2005, Wales was selected as an honorary member of Berkman's Internet and Social Center at Harvard Law School .

In the service of publicity, Wikipedia is also helped. Wikipedia currently has about 13,000 volunteers who are responsible for previewing all editing content. Editing information is posted only when the volunteer approves.

The Wikipedia volunteer force belongs to all sectors, including professors and experts in specialized fields. However, it is not certain that all editing information is carefully reviewed. There is no better way that users should have a cautious attitude.

M. KIM