Wikipedia edits
Hmm, I just realized this;
I use Wikipedia (a lot) to link to as a source for more information on something I mention in a blogpost (as many others do, that’s why the wiki-pages end up so high in Google search results).
The beauty of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit a topic, thus improving the content of this free encyclopedia. The threat for Wikipedia is that…anyone can edit a topic, even with ‘wrong’ intentions…in other words, altering text to hide the real ‘truth’ or polish up a person/company/event (mainly an ego-thing if you think about it).
Last week Virgil Griffith launched the Wikipedia Scanner, Wired has the article.
It’s basically a database that links anonymous
Wikipedia edits to organizations by the originating IP address. The scanner will not catch all ‘false’ edits, but gives a good insight in supposedly common practices for some big corporations, neat!
It shows that one should never trust just one source of information, a statement which certainmly holds for something as commonly trusted as Google btw.!!
In that respect the Mahalo project started by Jason Calacanis becomes very interesting, a search service that combines the input from technology (rss-feeds), the public submitting links and the full time/part time Mahalo staff to create trustable search results, nice!
Oh, and Wikipedia is certainly not out for me, I’ll just combine their info with other sources to make up my truth.
Hmm, wouldn’t it be nice to have a service just a click away that is doing that work for me, combining all sources out there together into one ultimate answer…uhhh, the Answer to The Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything is…42! 🙂
