Accountability Essential for Quality

As anyone who’s visited a message board or the comments section of a blog, you’ll understand that anonymity breeds extremism. It brings out the basest of human attributes.

What made me want to post on this topic? Well, after reading To delete Wikipedia entry or not to delete?, it’s clear to me that the Wiki phenomenon needs to make some changes, or be considered second-rate journalism, at best.

Anyone with a bone to pick can sign up and start posting “information” about any topic they want. It’s my opinion that a majority of the information on the Wikipedia is solid, but as more and more agenda minded, less-than-scrupulous individuals start participating, the quality of that Wiki product is going to drop.

At some point, the managers of these Wikis will need to figure out a way to classify the reliability of authors. Maybe they should adopt a star model like eBay uses? I just think that a poster needs to be held accountable for their writings. I can see it now, “Mr. Johnson, your misleading Wiki post is now going on your permanent record.”