__Use of Wiki's and Wikipedia__

A Wiki is an “online collaboration model and tool that allows any user to edit some content of certain webpages through a simple browser.” (MobileMan,2004). Wikipedia, the online reference encyclopedia that all or almost every internet user knows, is one such ‘online collaboration model. It contains more than 2 770 000 articles in English and other languages (wikipedia,2006). This sensational website started a new concept, an ‘open source project’ where any internet user could add articles, and that is how it would self-grow. It’s had raging success, especially amongst internet users as an educational research tool, but there have been social/ethical issues arousing from its use.

Reliability is one of the major issues. Since anyone can edit and add content to wikipedia, and especially since the users can remain anonymous, it is obvious that there will be content which is not reliable. There has been vandalism of several of wikipedia’s pages, where unknown users have put in explicit/vulgur content. Even some content which is perceived as being correct, may not be reliable. It may be outdated or not accurate information. From this wikipedia page a researcher may get incorrect information resulting in false data/conclusions being produced from the research. So wikipedia can act as a very unreliable source, causing problems for researchers. However, Wikipedia argues that there is a “self-healing” phenomena existent, stating that other users correct mistakes and inaccuracies when they view the contents. They also state that “there are some safeguards in place for blocking known hooligans” (Naughton,2004), in order to cut down on the amount of inaccurate/unsuitable content. These would increase the reliability of wikipedia’s contents, but only up to a certain extent as there will always be pages with inaccurate/unsuitable content going unnoticed.