Today I am writing about Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of wikipedia, and his new site that he hopes will help fight against fake news. In theguardian article entitled Wikipedia founder to fight fake news with new Wikitribune site, it talks about what exactly Wikitribune is going to be and why Wales believes it will help to stop the spread of false information. In essence Wikitribune will be for news what Wikipedia is for general information. The articles presented on the site will be written by professional journalists with the aid of “an army of volunteer community contributors.” (Hern, Alex) The idea being that with so many people, both paid and unpaid, fact checking the information presented the resulting articles will be more factually sound and contain less bias and opinions on the content. In my opinion this seems like a great idea. So far in my research of fake news, along with the ethical issues that surround it, the most ethical solution to the problem is simply fact checking everything. The primary issue of censoring fake news is how doing so would violate freedom of speech as well as open up the possibility of abuse in what content is censored. By having a large forum open to the public to help filter out the falsehoods present in ongoing stories, it helps people who are not willing or not capable of fact checking for themselves a large pool of allegedly unbiased and factual information. The issues I see with Wikitribunel are the same issues many have with Wikipedia. The article made it seem that not everyone is free to edit the sites content but that has yet to be seen. The issue with Wikipedia and potentially Wikitribunel is that since it is so easy to edit or vandalize a page some stories might be changed to contain fake news and a lot of people might read and buy into the false story before it get corrected. Though I feel Wikitribunel may become an excellent tool, I still feel it is necessary for everyone to take it upon themselves to fact check information before believing in it.
Hern, Alex. "Wikipedia Founder to Fight Fake News with New Wikitribune Site." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 Apr. 2017. Web. 29 Apr. 2017.
5 Comments
Miriam
5/2/2017 11:49:32 pm
Hello Kindall,
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5/3/2017 09:47:35 am
Kindall, as you are, I'm excited to see what becomes of Wikitribune. I think the biggest impact that it will have is educating people in how to actually fact-check and identify fake news. The idea, "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" is what I'm getting at. Although the Wikitribune sounds like it will be a great source of information, I believe that it's will better serve society by teaching individuals where and how to get accurate and unbiased information.
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Eliasar Gandara
5/3/2017 07:44:20 pm
Hello Kindall,
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Anita Garcia
5/3/2017 08:03:38 pm
After reading this, I couldn't help but laugh a little. Its very ironic that the founder of Wikipedia is behind this agenda. It's ironic to me because Wikipedia allows anyone contribute without a means of validating the content.
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Hugo Argueta
5/17/2017 10:15:03 pm
Hey Ian,
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AuthorIan Kindall a CD major emphasizing in Game Design Archives
May 2017
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