If you’re a regular reader, you know I’m fascinated by Wikipedia, and would like to think it is a bellwether of some larger changes in the world.

But is it accurate?

When we go to an encyclopedia, say to the magisterial Encyclopedia Brittanica, we know we are getting the Truth, right?

Wikipedia has recently been getting a “pros and cons” press – entries were vandalized and warped, which led to accusations of gross and widespread inaccuracies. But while that brouhaha was still developing, Nature reported that Wikipedia’s entries, at least in the sciences, were almost as accurate as the Brittanica’s. (It turns out that both sources had quite a few errors in the articles surveyed.)

In What is it with Wikipedia?, BBC News Technology commentator Bill Thompson reviews and comments on the interlocked stories. He concludes:

No information source is guaranteed to be accurate, and we should not place complete faith in something which can so easily be undermined through malice or ignorance thanks to its open architecture….

One benefit that might come from the wider publicity that Wikipedia is currently receiving is a better sense of how to evaluate information sources….

An educated audience is the only realistic way to ensure that we are not duped, tricked, fleeced or offended by the media we consume, and learning that online information sources may not be as accurate as they pretend to be is an important part of that education.

I use the Wikipedia a lot. It is a good starting point for serious research, but I would never accept something that I read there without checking.

Mr. Thompson and I are both fans of Wikipedia. I agree with him about the necessity of an educated audience. I agree that we shouldn’t entirely trust Wikipedia because it can be so easily undermined. But I don’t like the implication when he says he would never accept something he read there without checking.

From what single source would you accept information without checking and evaluating? From the Britannica, since it’s a few percentage points more accurate than Wikipediai? From our trusted elected leaders any time after Watergate? From which one of our news sources? When you get right down to it, how much do you trust your mother’s opinion of you?

I’d suggest a reworking of the quotation above, as a mantra for all of us, to be repeated whenever we fear there may be information lurking nearby:

No information source is guaranteed to be accurate, and all can easily be undermined through malice, ignorance, or hidden goals. Our only defense against the information we consume is to evaluate it warily and skillfully. At any moment, it’s best to assume someone is hoping to dupe, trick, and fleece us. (I don’t imagine anything can protect me from being constantly offended.)

In short, raise your hand (the sinister, of course) and repeat after me: I solemnly swear that I will never, ever accept uncritically any information provided to me. (Unless I really, really want to believe it.)

In the model of intelligence I present in Grow With the Flow, two tributaries help us to help our children learn to protect themselves from the misinformation that assails them. As part of “The Director,” (the third tributary), we want them to become observant and thoughtful problem solvers, who can think logically and clearly, and avoid hasty judgments or conclusions. We want them to actively search for data to test their existing knowledge, and check the compatibility of old and new knowledge; to gather information and evidence with an eye for what’s important, to evaluate information both intuitively and reflectively, to incoprporate emotions as a part of their analysis, even while they manage their own emotional response; and to check the in-the-world performance of everything they think they know. As part of their “Knowledge, External Intelligence, and Information Management” (the fifth tributary), we want them to learn to actively seek knowledge and information, to access a wide variety of knowledge realms, to be able to organize what they know in a way that suits the needs of the situation, to know what information is missing from what is presented to them, and to come to have an intuitive feel that someone is trying to hoodwink them.

Fortunately, the world will give us ample opportunity to help them hone these skills!

I see educating our children in these strategies as a kind of inoculation. We can’t possibly shield them from misinformation, manipulation, and untruth. But we can teach them to cope.

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p. s. It’s a whole different topic, and part of that bellwether hope with which I opened, to ask whether a source like Wikipedia, with transparent and immediate public accountability, may eventually prove to get closer to Truth than the Britannica. I wonder: the errors that Nature found – have both sources already fixed all of them?