Search Engine Optimization News Blog

Professional writers know one golden rule – never, ever, start an article with “According to Wikipedia…”. Apparently a lot of web folks haven’t figured that out yet.

A post by Andrew Gelman at Columbia.edu was talking about a new informational knowledge type site called Sourcewatch, that had a Wikipedia appearance, and stated:

…for  better or worse, Wikipedia is generally considered to be authoritative.

But then I was thinking . . . is this the beginning of the end for Wikipedia. I don’t know anything about Sourcewatch, if they’re good guys or bad guys or whatever–but if they can mimic Wikipedia, I’m sure lots of other organizations could do so too. And, when they do it, all of a sudden there will be a lot of authoritative-looking Wikipedia-like pages floating around, a sort of counterfeit money devaluing the “real” ‘pedia, which will then have to respond by branding itself–”100% real Wikipedia, accept no imitations”–and so on. Not a bad thing, perhaps, but not what we have now.

A few phrases jump out at me.

for  better or worse, Wikipedia is generally considered to be authoritative.

Ahh…. NOT. Write for any reputable publication on or offline, and Wikipedia is the first thing they tell you to avoid. Then there’s this:

there will be a lot of authoritative-looking Wikipedia-like pages floating around, a sort of counterfeit money devaluing the “real” ‘pedia

Again – funny, considering that Wikipedia isn’t really considered an authority source at all – or at least not by people who matter in the content business.

Of course there is some good stuff on Wikipedia, but calling it an authority is a bit more than a stretch. I’ll never quote it, and I’ll definitely not start or end with it when researching.