Lazy people don't check facts

John Seigenthaler has apparently been accused of involvement in the John F. Kennedy assassination by...Wikipedia. The New York Times (a bastion of fact-checking with a history of perfectly accurate stories--just ask Wen Ho Lee...and how 'bout that Judith Miller?) published a piece that you might be able to read here, unless it's already been sucked into that for-fee realm of suckiness that is Times Select, quoting both Mr. Seigenthaler, who wrote an op-ed piece in his own defense, and Jim Wales, who is the director(?) of the current Wikipedia enterprise. My favorite line in the whole story is this one:

"The case triggered extensive debate on the Internet over the value and reliability of Wikipedia, and more broadly, over the nature of online information."

Before I go any further, I should note that I'm an avid supporter of the Wikipedia experiment. I think it's cool that people can work together to create a body of knowledge that is outside the confines of, say an electronic database vendor who has every subscriber over a barrel with its 40% fee increases from year to year (shakes fist at Elsivier, Thomson Gale and the lot.) Wikipedia has saved my ass more than once in the course of studying for various programming and computer-related courses. There is also such useful information as an article on the history of the heavy metal umlaut (found by Maven.) But hey, it's an online resource, created by you, me, my manic-depressive bipolar brother who sometimes hears voices, and that guy over there who likes to walk about in a tinfoil helmet. If you take everything written there at face value, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn that I'd like to sell you.

To say that this situation 'triggers' debate about the nature of online information flabbergasts me. Are librarians and (some) eductors the only people fretting about kids' inability to find good sources for research papers? Are we really so un-savvy when it comes information on the Internet? Are we that information illiterate? Are we so drunk on power from our ability to type something into a Google search box and retrieve 13,459 results that we're just going to not think about whether any of those retrievals are worth shit? As much as I dislike doing so, when I report anything I learn from Wikipedia I do qualify my statements with 'Wikipedia says...' because it IS online information.

Maybe the author of the NYT piece had a deadline to meet, and the NYT has to fill pages in its Week in Review section, so the guy is just making some facile shit up to meet the word count. I hope this is the case, otherwise we as a lazy, lazy species are just ripe for manipulation or takeover by any malicious entity with a snappy website.

If you find a problem on Wikipedia, fix it, or dispute it's neutrality. Anyone can do it. We can't all be consumers all the time. Contribute, bitches!