The other day I had a first hand problem with wiki's and the failure for them to be inherently democratic. On Tuesday rumors had been going around that Kanye West had passed away, and suddenly it spread like wildfire. Soon everyone had changed there status on Facebook to show their sympathy for the rapper. However, when I went to Google to determine whether the story was fake or not I found out that it was all just a hoax, and once again Kanye West went back to being one of my most hated people in the world.
However, I couldn't help but notice that when I Googled "Is Kanye West Dead" there was a link to WikiAnswers, whose response was yes. After I had officially known this was false I found it extremely funny. For those who relied on this website though this could have had a totally different effect. I just thought it was a great example of wiki's being dominated by the majority instead of the minority. It wasn't until five hours after the hoax started that the website was changed to finally tell the truth.
That's a benefit of Google, though. You don't have to rely on one source. I always scroll through the search result page to get the gist of the stories before I go to one specific site.
ReplyDeleteI agree with laura, that it one of the best benefits of google, its very time saving for me and I think thats why I use it so much
ReplyDeleteSometimes the best sources are the paid ads in the sidebar. I sometimes find the best stuff over there
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