By Tom Kirkham
It seems that every week another collaborative online project makes the headlines, 'A Million Penguins' being just the latest example of joined-up Web 2.0 user-generated content in action. Whether it's for the purposes of creating fiction, entertaining others, or just expressing opinions and starting debate, these forums for interaction are now commanding greater recognition and respect than ever before.
However, the actual value of user-generated content has been subject to considerable scrutiny, and this has recently been brought into focus by the discovery of a worm in the online apple of knowledge that is Wikipedia. The recent revelation that an editor working on the world's biggest collaborative encyclopaedia was not in fact the professor of religion he claimed to be has reignited the debate as to just how much user-generated content can really be trusted.
Until a few days ago, Ryan Jordan had the power to edit Wikipedia articles, arbitrate disputes between authors and verify ‘facts’ (or not, as the case may be), and his exposure as a fraud is likely to infuriate and upset a great many readers and contributors, not to mention other Wikipedia editors who could well find their own legitimate credentials being called into question.
While paid up members of the Blogosphere march under a puritanical 'power to the people' banner, non-believers object to the simple fact that a lot of user-generated content is unmoderated, unsubstantiated and in some cases, seemingly authored by the criminally insane - and this issue is far harder to ignore when Web 2.0 figureheads like Wikipedia are also subject to such failings.
It's not that Ryan Jordan lacked integrity - reports suggest he was genuinely trying to do the job properly, even if this involved using that definitive religious text 'Catholicism For Dummies' - but at the end of the day, he was just another self-proclaimed expert trying to pull a fast one. It was only thanks to the anonymity of the web that he was able to mask his true identity.
Many people see the Blogosphere as the last bastion of ‘the truth’, fighting the battle against spin and big media in general. But going forward, sites like Wikipedia need to set a better example by putting stringent peer review policies in place to stop reputation of Web 2.0 as a whole being dragged through the mud.
There are already fears about the influence of the corporate world on the user-generated space, and if this new community doesn't learn to moderate content effectively, then the likelihood is that a handful of global corporations will step in to do the job for them...
Comments