Mathew Ingram is such a clear eyed zealot for "open" journalism and the equally open "Wikipedia" approach to knowledge that I had to wonder why he doesn't leave his own article open for people to go in and change it constantly. After all, he argues, that results in a better product in the end. I guess it's only "fact-based" articles that need to be changed constantly, not opinion pieces like his.
He grandly dismisses defenders of the old encyclopedias as "printophiles", and boasts that the Wikipedia entry on the Encyclopedia Britannica was changed 51 times in the hours after the announcement it would no longer be available in print. Proof, he says, that the system works.
Is it easier to search the net for "facts"? Of course. But I'm not ready to jump head-first into a world where everything changes all the time because some idiot with computer access thinks the world really is flat, and gets to have his version of "science" in the public record, if only fleetingly.
I would also recommend Ingram listen to the experience of an expert in one specific area of history who tried to correct Wikipedia "fact" and found out being right doesn't necessarily mean your word will be accepted. Yes, in the end the expert's truth prevailed, but pity the poor student who used Wikipedia to write about the Haymarket Riot in the interim.
(The Monday (and sometimes Saturday) Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this website.]
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