About ITP
Childhood ITP
Teenage ITP
Adult ITP
Medical Advisors
Research into ITP
Events
Convention
Seminar
Send for:-
Publications
American Perspective
Downloads
Leaflets and more....
Webwatch
Can you trust Wikipedia?
Based on what some like to call "The Wisdom of Crowds", Wikipedia is written by its users, you and me. So is it reliable? Yes and No, some pages are excellent, others not.
Legal Redux on link 1 discusses Wikipedia and quotes what has become quite famous on the internet, Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales saying that he deemed some pages "a horrific embarrassment," Redux also links to link 2, an article on Guardian Online that shows opinions of specific Wikipedia entries by experts in various areas. A similar page is at link 3.
The Wikipedia entry on ITP looks quite good but some of the detail may be challenged by our medical advisors.
The way Wikipedia works is interesting, ordinary people write material and put it on, it costs nothing. Other uses are free to edit that material, something that sometimes leads to disagreement. I know of at least one email exchange (not me!) between someone qualified in a particular scientific area and a well meaning but mistaken amateur. This amateur would repeatedly edit the reasoned view and replace it with his own, unsubstantiated view and be quite animated when challenged using evidence.
There are a number of self appointed editors, some of whom have what we may charitably call an interesting personality. You can see what I mean if you look at the ITP Wikipedia page and click the the "history" link at the top of the page. On the ITP history page, you will see a trail of edits by someone who calls himself "Bigdumbdinosaur ", this individual has his own entry which you can find simply by clicking on Bigdumbdinosaur. There he describes his mind "as a tomb of useless knowledge, a treasure trove of tedious minutia". He also says " Due to my apparent inability to learn in a classroom setting, most would label me an autodidact." Now what, you may ask, is this person doing editing the page on ITP? You can find out, you can see the older pages by clicking on the date in each history line. You can also see what edits have been made by clicking on "Compare Selected Revisions". From this you can see this person edits language details, keeping the content within the Wikipedia guidelines. These guidelines state that all content should be neutral and not overtly biased, political or commercial content is not allowed (although a few moments surfing around will show pages that break these guidelines, it is tempting for companies to edit their own pages!) Clicking on the "Discussion" kink at the top of the page, you can see what various editors have said about the ITP page.
Looking at the references at the bottom of the page, many are references to works by speakers at our conventions over the years and to documents on our website.
If you do not like anything on Wikipedia, create an account, login, and change it! The trouble is, someone may edit your edits. Some time ago I edited the ITP page to add the Association's website. A self appointed editor removed it on the grounds that we were "trying to increase traffic to our website". I put the link back again, this time to the children page. The link then stayed put, since then someone else has put the link back to my original. I no longer edit the page.
Now you have to decide, do you trust what you see on Wikipedia?
The free version of Britannica Online has lot of information but the search box does not seem to work as well as searching the site with Google! A search in Google with " itp site:britannica.com" works *. One problem is the commercial nature of the site, it gives featured links to a site advertising peniatab, an intervention for which the Association and its advisors cannot find any evidence of efficacy. As I have said in previous Webwatch articles, always look at who publishes a site and what they have to gain before you place your trust in the information.
Happy surfing
Howard
* You can force Google to search a specific site by using this syntax,
item or items to search for followed by site:siteaddress with no spaces
between site: and the address, e.g. itp site:britannica.com
Links
1: ledux.blogspot.com/2005/12/can-you-trust-wikipedia.html
2: www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/oct/24/comment.newmedia
3:www.mg.co.za/article/2005-11-07-can-you-trust-wikipedia