Web 2.0 Content - Can You Trust It?

Last week, a prominent Wikipedia editor was outed by the New Yorker magazine as a fraud. The editor, using the handle Essjay, claimed to be a professor of religious studies at a private college, and said he taught both graduate and undergraduate classes in theology. As an editor, he had the ability to settle disputes between contributors, remove vandalism on the site, and edit submitted articles in his subject area. And while he claimed to have a PhD and a tenured faculty position, he was actually a 24-year-old college student named Ryan Jordan who was using the book Catholicism for Dummies to assist him in his work on the site. His true identity came to light after an interview with him ran in the New Yorker last summer, and the magazine published an editorial note with their findings.

Jimmy Wales, a co-founder of Wikipedia, commented last week after the revelation, that “[Wikipedia is] based on twin pillars of trust and tolerance,” and asked for Jordan's resignation from the site, which Jordan submitted on 4 March.

While the reality of individuals faking facts about their lives online is certainly nothing new, and neither is resume padding, it does call into question the reliability of the content on Web 2.0 sites, and actually ties into a subject I was already mulling over after seeing plagiarism on some blogs. Many contributors to Web 2.0 sites are viewed as experts in their chosen subject matter. People look to the content as something they can learn from, reference, and apply to jobs and projects as well as everyday life, so what happens when that content is falsified? As a freelance writer, I tend to stick to subject areas that I already know about and feel passionately about, but there are scores of people online who are more than willing to fake knowledge and/or credentials such as Jordan did for money, publicity, or ego.

In all likelihood, had Jordan not had the hubris to consent to the New Yorker article, it's likely that his true identity may never have come to light. However, the print journalists still stick to traditional practices of checking sources and facts thoroughly, and if a falsehood comes to light, they are usually quick to confess to the error. Obviously a magazine like the New Yorker with such a large readership provides a well-publicized corrections, but even if an online contributor is outed as a fake online, will it call the overall content of a site into question?

Of course, this really isn't such a new concept, but as the Web 2.0 push to involve more and more contributors for content generation proliferates, how will it affect the reliability of the content? If more situations like this one come to light, will more people distrust the information provided on collaborative sites? And for every situation where falsification is outed, how many more instances are there that no one ever discovers?

UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments, the information contained in the New Yorker note was brought to light by members of a Wikipedia forum after Jordan obtained a position at Wikia and posted his biographical information there. Jordan is no longer an employee of Wikia as his former bio page notes. 

Source: BBC News