An article is a construct – hoaxes and Wikipedia
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Wikipedia gets quite a bit of press attention from drive-by vandalism, incoherent scribbles, rude gestures, and just plain page blanking perpetuated by Internet trolls and schoolchildren who take the site's free-to-edit model as an invitation to cause as much havoc as possible. The public perception that Wikipedia is riddled with errors and perpetually vandalized was a major retardant in the site's formative years, when it first engaged in its still-central battle for relevance and accuracy.
But this is a battle that, on the whole, Wikipedia has been winning for a lengthy amount of time. Years of nearly unchecked growth and explosive expansion have made Wikipedia not only the largest but also the most expansive information compendium the world has ever seen. Editing is tightly watched by users armed with tools like Twinkle, Huggle, rollback, semiprotection, and bots. Vandalism as we most commonly think of it is anything but dead—visible pages still regularly get as much as 50 percent of their edits reverted[1]—but today's compendium of anti-vandalism tools have confined it in lesser form to the furthest and most overtaxed fringes of Wikipedia.
The dearth of vandalism lasting more than a few seconds has done much to improve our image. Five years ago, a project as enterprising as the Wikipedia Education Program could never have even existed, let alone thrived as it does today.[2] The days when being a regular editor on Wikipedia was seen as unusual by others are slowly becoming more distant, its use ever more mainstream, and its editing body ever more academic. But another, subtler form of vandalism persists, and in the deterioration of its more visible cousin, may even be spreading—fabrication.[3] Wikipedia has a long, daresay storied history with the spinning of yarns; our internal list documents 198 of the largest ones we have caught as of 4 January 2013. This op-ed will attempt to explain why.
- ^ See the rough guide to semi-protection.
- ^ Not to imply that it has been unilaterally successful, but rather that it is quite voluminous.
- ^ The difference between fabrication and hoaxes on Wikipedia is not strictly defined, as Wikipedia hoaxes are technically articles that are spurious. This op-ed will treat the matter in a wider sense and include smaller bits of misinformation.