A collection of persistent mistakes and fraudulent facts from the world’s most popular reference work.

How many times have you found yourself in a lovely yet heated discussion, feeling that you might be making some headway with your argument, only to hear the following dreaded phrase - “Weeeelll, according to Wikipedia…” - followed by a stream of apocryphal facts and sources?

Forget for a moment the questionable prudence in citing an encyclopedia as a source – after all, we all turn to it as a quick reference now and again – but with mistakes so rampant, bias so pronounced and (despite Wikipedia’s best policy efforts) the actual real world practice of scholarly correction so spotty, how can we in good conscience trust the trivia that comes spewing forth from the Grand Collaboration?

side note: I have direct experience with the sketchy nature of Wikipedia. A good friend’s well-researched entry was once removed with no explanation and replaced with a poorly written and terribly inaccurate 14 year old girl’s entry (still active), while one of my own original entries became a marketing platform for my competitors – still uncorrected years later.

Author Alex Rudzinski’s latest book, titled According to Wikipedia, was rumored to have originally been a diatribe against the collaborative encyclopedia, but realizing that he wanted more to sell books than show himself to be a bitter old curmudgeon, he revamped the work to be a collection of the most hilarious mistakes found in the online resource, accompanied by his own well-researched corrections, resulting in a book that is a delight (and a hoot) to read.

Sure, it’s good for a laugh (for instance, did you know that Earth is the largest planet in the world?) but Rudzinski is still able to work in his now subtle critiques of the service and strangely lay bare the startling implications - for history, science and public opinion - of the younger generation’s reliance upon Wikipedia.

After reading this work and having a good laugh, you’ll also agree deeply with one reviewer’s response:

“Clearly shows that having an opinion does not entitle one to express it!”

Or Marc Fauschite’s pithy five word review:

“Is this what America thinks?”

The answer to which is, unfortunately, yes.

Some may consider the work to be a fun call back to critical thinking and research, others may enjoy it for the critique of open source collaborative culture and the dangers of letting everyone speak for themselves, but at its core According to Wikipedia is a delightful little collection of quirky mistakes and hilarious misquotes that deserves a place on everyone’s coffee table or couch-side stack of books.

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tags: books, encyclopedias, open source, trivia, web 2.0, wikipedia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at Mar 19, 08 | 3:00 pm and is filed under Books, Just Noumenon Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.