August 04, 2006: Wikipedia Goes to War

It all seems to have begun when last week's Onion ran a front-page story (which also appeared on their Web site) entitled "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence." The Web site included the above captioned photograph. I really felt this was a great example of how sharply-focused humor can often tell a story far better than the most reasoned argumentation, the The Onion really has a knack for seeding their text with throw-away gags that too easily slip by unnoticed.

Did this article prompt Stephen Colbert to enter the fray? While there was no explicit acknowledgment, the timing of his July 31 broadcast makes one think. The Media Blog on CNET News.com provided a nice account of the whole affair, complete with a link to the YouTube video. However, while it appears that Wikipedia did not pay attention to The Onion (perhaps because they figured that Onion readers know what satire is, which is why they read The Onion in the first place), they decided that they would not let Colbert's jab go without a response. (Do they assume that Colbert's viewers do not know what satire is and now turn to Comedy Central as their primary source for news and commentary?) Yesterday's Media Blog reported that Wikipedia is trying to ban Colbert from interfering with their content. Admittedly, Colbert gave them more cause for concern than The Onion: If Colbert was not only celebrating the inaccuracies on Wikipedia but also encouraging his viewers to seed Wikipedia with bogus content, then I can understand why the editors at Wikipedia would be worried.

My question, though, is whether or not this was the right way for Wikipedia to react. The fact is that content maintenance is a far more delicate problem than Wikipedia has led us to believe. After all Wikipedia already had to deal with deliberately contributed bogus information in their article about John Seigenthaler, Sr.; and Seigenthaler raised quite a stick when he discovered it. Nevertheless, it appears that the way in which Wikipedia responsed was to incorporate information about the controversy into their article about Seigenthaler as evidence of how their system "works." The problem is that this situation was an isolated case. Their reaction to Colbert seems to be an admission that their "solution" would not scale up to a more massive attack on their content. So their "Plan B" reaction appears to be to censor Colbert; but there are a variety of ways in which we can envision a samizdat campaign to undermine Wikipedia content (without there necessarily being any involvement on Colbert's part).

Personally, I think that anyone interested in this episode would do well to bone up on Gresham's Law (possibly by reading the Wikipedia entry before anyone tries to muck with it). If "artificial" currency (such as paper fiat money) drives out specie, content that is "artificial" (in the sense of being made up without necessarily being in any way warranted) can drive out content that is more "substantiated." Come to think of it, isn't that what the Bush administration has been trying to do with mass media?