Rather fascinating but alarming article at OhMyNews about a possible case of Wikipedia manipulation.
Regardless of whether or not it's true, Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services, offers some real food for thought as to whether intelligence services can influence or place trusted editors within sites like Wikipedia to shape news and information.
The argument that the crowd will resolve disputes with collective wisdom or 'social knowledge' holds true providing everyone is working from the same position - ie. sharing their genuine opinions.
Doesn't this fall apart when someone is pushing a specific agenda?
Where you normally have a group of people sharing ideas to achieve an undetermined outcome of information, you have a someone with a clear and fixed idea of what the information should look like at the end of the process?
Worth reading the article by Ludwig De Braeckeleer which gives an overview of the debates raging about a particular Wikipedia admin over at Wikipedia Review and Wikipedia-Watch.org.
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