Andrew Dalby, the author "The World and Wikipedia" commences the book with real supported examples of how 'wikipedians' are editing reality. Many of Dalby's examples of how Wikipedia is constantly changing explain why significant facts over this reference source can not be trusted or used for validity. Dalby states, "it is the evidence of the awesome power wielded by those who write on Wikipedia. Whatever they write." (p. 12), to set the tone for the rest of the book: why we should, and why we should not trust Wikipedia no matter how much we hate or love it.
Dalby interestingly introduces how Wikipedia has formed describing "three traditions of books specially designed to help in the quest for knowledge" (p. 19). The three traditions primarily are encyclopedias used as far back as AD 79, that have developed more sophisticated overtime such as Shen Kuo's and Pliny's first encyclopedias that grew from sections to volumes then finally to the digital format (Encarta/Nupedia). He continues to emphasize the rapid growth of Wikipedia across the world in more than 20 different languages; this is the perfect example of Neil Postman's Technopoly. Because the development of computers/technology world and how each piece of information can be accessed through the Internet, Wikipedia became an easy resource to obtain information that we would need to get at a library or pay for at a trusted/reliable website.
However, even though most of us students use it as our primary reference source and giving more credit to amateur writers/editors, we are also giving Wikipedia the dominant hand of encyclopedias over resources that are trusted like Britannica. There are millions of people out there that despise what Wikipedia is and what it has to offer because now, "Britannica simply couldn't maintain its business model with banner ads-- they would either have to become open content (and therefore have a moral justification to ask for volunteers) or become a pay service. It seems they've chosen the latter route, which is great news for Wikipedia..." (p. 53). Moreover, Wikipedia has become an internet bully, a source for internet vandalism. Wrong perceptions such as false biographies like of John Seigenthaler Sr. and, cyberspace threatening in France have all taken place through Wikipedia. Now known to some people as the "encyclopedia full of crap" (p. 62), we still use it despite Wikipedia's credibility and the trouble it started.
If it is so untrusted and not edited by reliable sources, Dalby perfectly explains why we always end up on Wikipedia. As Wikipedia was often edited, and rapidly producing articles, "the main search engines, like Google and Yahoo...systematically place Wikipedia pages at the top of their responses for nearly every enquiry and the great majority of surfers do not look any further" (p. 83). Therefore, when we are searching for anything in general, "Wikipedia is the largest available source of serious text across all subject areas. Favoring Wikipedia was the simplest way to ensure that the average Google results page would look useful" (p. 85-86).
The first half of the book concludes with a very popular issue today, plagiarism. Because Wikipedia has become the most popular reference source since 2005, the Internet, or shall I say this "Technopoly" we are in have caused the past couple generations including this current one to find information the simplest, most easy way. That is, use Wikipedia. Finding information that is useful and somewhat sounds right, we're all going to use it and we're not going to go out of our way to use other cited, reliable sources instead like Britannica.
As I'm sitting in the library writing this post, I'm looking at the bookshelves to the left of me, full of encyclopedias, and reference books. Not one of them looks like it has been touched. It might sound unfortunate that we have put these credited resources obsolete, but technology seems to be just as credible as finding information from the encyclopedia sitting on the bookshelves of a library since the growth of Wikipedia has taken over the Internet.
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