[Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia

[Jeremy Dunck]

On 10/13/05, Thomale, J <j.thomale at ttu.edu> wrote:
...
> It's a ground-up way (and, IMHO, a backwards way) of thinking about
> truth. It's the modern viewpoint juxtaposed against the postmodern: is
> there objective Truth out there for us to discover? Or do we all create
> our own "truth"?
...
> On the web, things that are popular--i.e., things that are
> linked to most often--are perceived as "more authoritative" and thus
> "more truthful." Maybe not to you, and maybe not to me, but in the eyes
> of the general population, I think this holds true.
>
> As we continue our tentative entrance into this "brave new world" of
> networked information, librarians should be fully cognizant of and take
> great care that we don't espouse this viewpoint. As librarians, we very
> much fight against this notion that a piece of information's veracity
> depends on its popularity (or accessibility, or findability, or whatever
> word you want to use).
...

I don't actually think this is a new phenomenon.  Most people take
pieces published in the NY Times at face value under the assumption
that the paper is popular, has a good reputation, and is therefore
trustworthy.  Of course that's not always right.

The web magnifies a gap between trust and scholarship which has always
been there.

We (individually) can't possible fact-check everything.  Trust enters
into it somewhere.  The public has to trust that librarians are going
to steer them straight, for example.  ;-)