Comment Filtered vs Unfiltered Info (Score 1) 701
Perhaps today you cannot cite wikipedia in an academic setting, but do not laugh at the thought that one day wikipedia, google scholar, slashdot, and all of the similar endevours in their vein will bring about a complete shift in what information is trusted.
People are used to having experts filter inaccuracies and out and out lies from the information they read. With sources like Wikipedia, it's unclear to people how to separate the lies from the truth. (And in a climate of "truthiness", that distinction gets even cloudier...). SOME people will get better at filtering for themselves. The question is whether or not enough people will learn that skill to make the Wikipedias of the world the "goto" sources of the future. The problem is that anytime a new technology asks MORE of us as people, it fights an uphill battle.
But I do think that there is some hope for learning these new filtering skills. People who read both Slashdot and Digg have probably experienced this self-filtering already. Any sensational sounding Digg headline (even one that makes the front page (or perhaps especially one that makes the front page)) referencing an article is immediately suspect. But if the same news or article makes it onto Slashdot, the suspect-o-meter doesn't register quite so high. Slashdot doesn't perfectly filter out meaningless articles either - but the frequency for Slashdot is certainly lower than it is for Digg. Whether you prefer the Digg method to the Slashdot method has a healthy dependence on how much time you have to wade through the noise and filter it out for yourself.
People are used to having experts filter inaccuracies and out and out lies from the information they read. With sources like Wikipedia, it's unclear to people how to separate the lies from the truth. (And in a climate of "truthiness", that distinction gets even cloudier...). SOME people will get better at filtering for themselves. The question is whether or not enough people will learn that skill to make the Wikipedias of the world the "goto" sources of the future. The problem is that anytime a new technology asks MORE of us as people, it fights an uphill battle.
But I do think that there is some hope for learning these new filtering skills. People who read both Slashdot and Digg have probably experienced this self-filtering already. Any sensational sounding Digg headline (even one that makes the front page (or perhaps especially one that makes the front page)) referencing an article is immediately suspect. But if the same news or article makes it onto Slashdot, the suspect-o-meter doesn't register quite so high. Slashdot doesn't perfectly filter out meaningless articles either - but the frequency for Slashdot is certainly lower than it is for Digg. Whether you prefer the Digg method to the Slashdot method has a healthy dependence on how much time you have to wade through the noise and filter it out for yourself.
