Weinberger 9 & 10

Wienberger's continued discussion of messiness, knowledge, and the idea of "collective delusion" got me thinking (again) about our class discussion about wikipedia. I think wikis and similar kinds of online resources can be valuable, however, there is a danger, no matter how many checks and balances the moderators put into place. When I'm searching through sites like these, looking for information of any kind, I try to maintain an awareness of who is engaging in the discussion and why. A good example of this (although admittedly trivial) is ratemyprofessor.com. I have, on occasion, visited the site to try to get a picture of a professor with whom I am not familiar. The problem with a site like ratemyprofessor, however, is that the only people who post are those who hold very strong (and often very biased) opinions about the professor in question. If you consider how many students are actually aware of the existence of the site, how many of those students feel strongly enough to access the site and post an opinion, and how many of those students are presenting completely unbiased information, the reliability of the site itself becomes pretty shaky. 

The same problem, I think, presents itself on the web in general. True, it's become more and more universal...however, any site that presents an opinion, or even information, of any kind, too often represents only a cross-section of public opinion or knowledge.