INTERVIEW
Wikipedia and the search for trusted information
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales talks exclusively to IP’s Rob Green about the search for trusted information and the role of libraries and librarians in the face of the rise of fake news, clickbait and the erosion of trust in news and information sources.
WHEN Wikipedia was launched in 2001, we were living in a very diff er- ent world. Mobile phones were still largely speaking and texting devices. It would be a full six years before the notion of a smartphone gained traction with consumers, following the release of the fi rst iPhone. Today’s connected generation take fi ngertip computing power for granted, and have instant access to information and data from across the internet. Anyone with a connected device not only consumes data, they curate it and create it – con- stantly adding to the deluge of data and information available.
Sources of trusted information Huge chunks of that information is benign, but the ease with which it can be created and accessed means it has become simple to manipulate and distort the truth. Jimmy says that how people judge this proliferation of information needs to be addressed – and points to libraries and librarians as the facili- tators to improve skills. He said: “One of the things I want to talk about is how when I was a kid or teenager, the range of quality information available to me was actually fairly narrow. It ranged from quality newspaper and magazines, books, down to tabloid newspapers and up to academic journals – although they were not always so easily available. Now, all of those things are available at your fi ngertips, and a lot more.”
Jimmy points out that for a lot of peo- ple it is diffi cult to not only discern what
16 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rob Green (@CILIP_Reporter,
rob.green@
cilip.org.uk) is Editor-in-Chief, Information Professional.
sources can be trusted, but also to judge sources in the proper context. For instance, peer-reviewed medical journals are clearly sources to be trusted – but Jimmy says: “One of the things we know about medical literature is that studies get published with fi ndings that are intriguing and interest- ing – but maybe it’s a study of 20 people that shows an unusual result. Now, medical professionals know to say, ‘that’s interesting, we should do some more studies and fi nd out more’. After a few more years of research and some meta-analysis we fi nd that that is an unusual outlier.
“But it’s quite easy for a person, particu- larly if they are ill and vulnerable, to read something and take it at face value. There are tons of people who can take that kind of information in the wrong context”.
The crackpot and the bogus At the other extreme, convincing fakes can be created – “crackpot, bogus ideas
September 2018
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