Is Wikipedia too vulnerable to pranks and errors?
Richard Reyes-Gavilan Supervising librarian, New York Public Library Humanities Department
Librarians are obsessed with sources. We don't know who is responsible for verifying Wikipedia entries. I realize that Wikipedia is attempting to address the problem by making editors register with the site, but there are still many issues about reliability that remain unanswered. For the casual user, Wikipedia is great; once the need for information goes beyond mere curiosity, Wikipedia can't be relied on.
A. J. Jacobs Author, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
False edits on Wikipedia are a big problem, but not a fatal one. I'd compare them to a bad cold, not pneumonia. The key to Wikipedia working smoothly is to have a community of integrity-obsessed hall monitors who check all the recently altered entries. Right now, the watchdogs are overwhelmed. Wikipedia needs more virtuous volunteers.
Joi Ito Technologist
I have never seen a mainstream media article about Wikipedia that didn't itself contain errors. What's the retraction time for those errors? Wikipedia works because it's dynamic and alive and doesn't require the same structures as old-fashioned, slow media. Every time I make a change online, I notice it being checked and elaborated on in minutes. I wish people would stop comparing a living organism to deadwood.
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