The internet can be seen as a gathering place of information, but at the same time how much of what we find is actually true? To add to that, what's stopping people from taking the false information and spreading it because they believe it was real?
Last year former journalist John Seigenthaler Sr.'s Wikipedia biography was edited with false information implying that he was connected to the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy. It was later revealed to be a hoax that someone was playing on his friend. However from May 26 to October 6 of last year Wikipedia showed the false and defamatory information; that's over four months before it was corrected. To further the problem both Answer.com and Reference.com copied the false information onto their own entries on Seigenthaler.
What's posted on the internet does not always have an attributing source, and there's no telling what false information would find its way out there and who would find it and believe that information. Plus with the internet constantly updating no one knows when defamatory information can go up, whether it come about as a hoax or out of spite, and who would find and believe that information within the time it remains up. With Seigenthaler's situation, his false information can easily be believed as true given Wikipedia's popularity and the dependency people have for it as a quick online resource (in fact it has been cited by some of my peers here), and with Wikipedia being open to the community to edit you never know what can appear there.
With the internet becoming as huge as it is and being a quick and easy place to "look things up," how safe is information out there especially when no links are provided? With it constantly changing and updating who knows when things would become untimely and false information is read and believed before it is fixed or taken down.
Tracy Steel @ Tue, 02/07/2006 - 11:24pm
I was actually going to write about this, but you beat me to it. With Wikipedia, which is well known to be a collaborative website, people should know to take that information with a grain of salt--I think that's just common sense. If you're doing a research paper or anything of importance, like, ahem, something for Answer.com or Reference.com, you really should double check your facts. Maybe it's not the abused freedom of the internet that is the problem, but laziness.