The Undue Weight of Truth on Wikipedia by Messer-Kruse - Article Example

Messer-Kruse’s extensive study led him to the findings that the most prevailing accounts are not in fact accurate. But his editing was prevented by the Wikipedia editors since the statement is inconsistent with most authors.             This poses a major problem because the website restrains in such a way that the majority view prevails, despite its lack of basis, over the minority with well-founded evidence based on actual facts. This battle of sources where Wikipedia has adopted a doctrine of reliability according to popular estimation makes it impossible to successfully contribute when the numbers are not in your favor.

New information and findings would also be a problem when the strict policy of undue weight is considered since this would inadvertently lead to rejecting the same because of overwhelming past scholarly proclamations. As a reaction of one Wikipedia editor has told him, “If all historians save one say that the sky was green in 1888, our policies require that we write 'Most historians write that the sky was green, but one says the sky was blue” (as cited by Messer-Kruse, 2012).             This is relevant because it provides another reason for a well-known erudite belief that it is ill-advised to rely on Wikipedia as an academic source.

Advance English Composition teaches us the necessity of reliable sources in our research to produce quality and substantiated papers. The system of Wikipedia in comparison to the tedious process of editing, revising, and fact-checking embraced by Scholars and even journalistic writers yields for the margin of error to be significantly reduced than social networking media such as Wikipedia.