Wikipedia and the alterable state of things
I’ve browsed Wikipedia for multiple years now and have found it to be such a helpful resource when I need to look up something . So much easier than pulling out the old Brittanica’s looking up things in the Micropedia (or is it the Macropedia first?) then going to the other book if need be seems a bit clunkier. In a digital format I am freed from needing to manage any books. If I don’t like reading it on screen I can just print it out. I also love the fact that the Wikipedia is a community effort with experts from all fields contributing to make it what it is. It seems to be coming to some hard times here though.
With all of the media fussing about Wikipedia being altered incorrectly by people the thought of how ephemeral the internet is came up in my mind. Because it is built upon a digital medium it is so easily alterable and untrackable. Granted there are controls in place to track those changes, but as a programmer I know well that even those measures can be circumvented if desired. I’ve wondered about having the ability to get snapshots of Wikipedia distributed on a specified time interval, say every quarter or year. I realize it is a huge amount of data, but it seems like a good thing to do. Just looking at human nature within the scope of human history and considering how any entity who gains a great deal of power suddenly becomes suspect for trying to control other human beings it seems like letting the Wikipedia distribute itself to many other third parties would help the situation.
Just last night my sister came to my house to add some citations from Wikipedia which drove home to my mind how much it is already depended on. If it is being cited as a source in college papers it must have at least some semblance of credibility in general.
I find myself wondering if the watchers of certain articles allow their biases to take over? What if certain people die that kept certain topics in check and unbiased? There are too many loopholes in the system as a whole. If it continues to grow in popularity as a standard reference duplication and distribution, say to libraries all over the world, would help the situation. I know that would cost money, but depending on how much actual data is entailed it may not be that big of a deal in the coming future. With the newer higher formats of media coming out (isn’t BluRay supposed to weigh in at 50GB?) I would imagine libraries would be able to afford a subscription service to Wikipedia that could essentially pay for the costs of implementing such a distribution.