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Wikipedia, the world's largest user-generated online encyclopedia is 10. Sometimes it's hard to believe anything on the web could be 10 years old. In human years, 10 is but a pup: a small, gangly thing with too large hands and feet. Old enough to sense the onset of teenage-dom, but still too young to see the world as it really is. Knowing the difference between fact and fiction, for instance, can be particularly difficult at this age--and in this one way, Wikipedia is still a lot like that prepubescent child.
Six years ago, I pondered whether Wikipedia was in fact dangerous. So much information, so many people using it as a source, and so much potential for misuse. When I wrote the story, the site was being roiled by a fresh controversy. One man had, as a joke, written a fake biography of journalist
John Seigenthaler. The entry included nonsense about him and the John F Kennedy assassination. The post author lost his job and Wikipedia ended up with a black eye. Up until then, it seems as if no one realized how easy it was for anyone to enter virtually anything in the information Wiki.