Anonymity on the Web is an article of faith at worst and a generally accepted practice at best. But as I’ve written previously, anonymity has a dark side (or brings out a dark side) in the global conversation.
Now, witness the spirited debate over on Mashable about the New York Times getting collaboration from Wikipedia in the case of kidnapped reporter David Rohde. “the NYT kept the news from breaking out to increase his chance of survival. The hardest part of it? Keeping the news off Wikipedia.”
At the heart of Mashable’s quandary is “Wikipedia is supposed to be a democratic system; editors fix each other’s work until a consensus about the correctness of an article is reached. On this particular occasion, it wasn’t; an invisible hand of the Wikipedia overseers simply erased a part of the truth.”
Does this sound familiar? In the MSM, if something is wrong, or you need to appeal to better instincts, there is someone you can approach. On the Web (and especially in Wiki-land) you have no idea whether anyone is who they say they are. “[A]nyone can edit Wikipedia without providing their correct real life info and contact, you can’t even reach out to them, let alone persuade them to do this or that. In most cases, it ensures that the democratic process of editing on Wikipedia is preserved. In some cases, including this one, it’s a problem.”
With anonymity, there is no accountability, and therefore no authority; without some assurance of authority, how can a reader determine accuracy?
I know that Wikis depend on the pond of editors to correct each other, but what happens if I see a post in the morning that doesn’t get corrected until noon — or the next week? Meanwhile, the mistaken, or wilfully inaccurate post makes its way around the interwebs.
We need a means to ensure accountability and authority that doesn’t depend on the unproven “wisdom of crowds.” After all, some crowds are merely mobs.
