Sayeth some bloke called John Siegenthaler:
The marketplace of ideas ultimately will take care of the problem but in the meantime, what happens to people like me?
You’ll just have to deal with obscurity like the rest of us, mate. Get over it. Or press “edit”.
I do wish the moaners would use that edit functionality more. That said, one friend who felt that an article about her was offensive found her edits being reverted…
Sorry, I do think the moaners do have a point here – unless you are going to rename Wikipedia “Dodgypedia”.This is a good example of how the internet can be a very unreliable source of information. Another example is the Brian Wilde Date of Birth Scandal at http://www.porridge.org.uk/wildes.html
I rather suspect that eventually the internet or its equivalent will be overwhelmed by dodgy information. Perhaps in 300 years time historians will have a complete list of Prime Ministers from Walpole up to Blair, and then a fragmentary list thereafter, because there won’t be any paper copies of documents , only electronic media vulnerable to tampering ,technological obsolescence , and confusion between real politicians and fictional ones (e.g. from the West Wing).
Or perhaps those historians will be able to determine who was Prime Minister after Blair by unearthing brass plates from the buildings that he opens, in the same way that we know about the (early) Roman Governors of Britain from the stones that have their names on.
But that’s just life, there’s no need to get worked up about it.
I was taught in school that secondary sources were always inherently dodgy and that if you really wanted to know your facts, go to the primary source. I don’t think that rule is any different for the internet compared to books, it’s just that the internet is easier to check up on. If anything that makes it more secure.