That question is the theme of the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum, a two-day conference that merges technology with politics. Another theme that continued to be mentioned during the opening event of PdF was the ongoing disaster in the Gulf Coast, and the inability of the government and private industry to solve the crisis.

Micah Sifry noted during his welcome remarks that the real time viewing and public reaction of the oil spill is a metaphor for our times, where people can stare at the images and video, but are slow to take action. Sifry also posed the question: Will the websites, networks and tools being built facilitate long-term growth and solutions?

The event began with an impressive list of speakers, including Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, who spoke of his websites’ ability to offer not only access to data, but also facilitate dialog. He mentioned 9/11 and the Haiti earthquakes as examples of being able to provide people an outlet in a time when broadcast news offers wide coverage but little in the way of real information or details.Interestingly, while Wales sees the value in his own website and its transparency, he expressed concern in the value of having the home value of a neighbors’ home or the myriad of details found on sex offender websites. He remarked that in government, there are some things that need to be private simply so that business can be completed.

Next, the legendary Daniel Ellsberg spoke of how he would have released the Pentagon papers of 1971 in today’s times, mentioning the immediate value in scanning the documents and simply posting them online. The conversation then questioned whether that action would have had the same effect as it did during that time, when more attention was paid on the fact that the government learned that they could not stop the exchange of information.

Ellsberg was joined on Skype by Julian Assange from WikiLeaks , whose website publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct. Ellsberg spoke of the fact that his website “makes whistleblowers the heroes” and that courage it takes to expose wrongdoings encourages others to do the same, creating more transparency in government.

Video from PDF is streaming live at http://personaldemocracy.com/live .

You can also keep up with the latest Tweets. Check out the PdF Twitterslurp at http://personaldemocracy.com/twitter , powered by The Bivings Group.

Event hashtag is #pdf10.

Wikipedia is different from other well known websites with health information in that it allows anyone – subject experts and laypeople – to contribute and edit information that it presents. Given that anyone with access to the site can edit it, scholarly studies have found to the surprise of Wikipedia’s critics that scientific information on the site is as nearly as accurate as that found in Encyclopedia Britannica (read the December 2005 Nature article “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head” that helped publicize this debate). This also goes against the reasoning of established measures of health information accuracy like the standards of the HONcode. Instead of having strict editorial procedures involving subject experts, Wikipedia’s culture fosters and regulates a sizable community of ardent editors who are devoted to protecting the information integrity of the site, and scholars speculate that their motivations are not altruistic. Through the diligence of active Wikipedia users and the establishment of standards, procedures, boundaries of responsibilities, and sanctions, the site has articles with accurate information. To discuss Wikipedia’s accuracy, this paper reviews the scholarly literature about Wikipedia’s accuracy in relation to health information. This discussion will focus on the the following topics: Wikipedia’s contribution to consumer health information sites on the Internet, metrics used to measure the quality of health information on the Internet, its level of accuracy, what aspects of its community culture enable it to maintain remarkably high accuracy levels, and the characteristics and aims of other collaborative websites like Wikipedia.

In 1995, Wikis were invented for the Internet…but it wasn’t until 2001 that Wikipedia was invented.

It’s interesting that there was such a large learning gap between the two.  6 years for people to fully utilize what is now my favorite thing on the Internet.

Wikipedia is mob rule of factual knowledge…first attempt to garner general knowledge of all people around the world.

Never have I heard such a brilliant and insightful summary of Wikipedia.  “Mob rule of factual knowledge” may be the most telling phrase of the current generation.

Wikipedia is neither democratic nor transparent, and the list of rejected articles is ever-growing.

Now, here is something that I did not know.  I was fully aware that a small group of uber-wikipedians ruled the site, but the size of their iron fist is much greater than I expected.  Here is a link to a Wikipedia registered user who put together some interesting graphs on the topic.

“Being social has always been the best way to get ahead”

This could be my life motto.  I just wanted to highlight it here once more.

43,000,000,000 text messages were sent last year.

Like Pesce, I think that it’s amazing that this technology used to be dismissed as a fad.  I have some friends now that use text messaging more than actual phone calls.  This fact alone made me understand why I need to be more open to newer technology, as I am one of those people that dismisses nearly everything as a fad.

Hyper connectivity begets hypermimesis begets hyperempowerment.

Being well connected through technology helps us to learn by repetition.  With this additional learning comes great power through the mass collection of ideas.  The Obama campaign alone has taught as that, which Pesce highlights (several times) as an example.

I would also like to thank Pesce for being one of the frighteningly few presenters that encorporated several different Web 2.0 tools into his speech.  I mean, that’s the reason I was there…to see technology in politics and journalism.

Via Secrecy News:

The collaboratively written online encyclopedia Wikipedia, created in 2001, has steadily grown in popularity, credibility and influence to the point that it is now used and referenced in U.S. Government intelligence products.

A March 19 profile of Indian Congress Party Leader Rahul Gandhi prepared by the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of Director of National Intelligence is explicitly derived from "various internet sources including wikipedia.org." A March 21 OSC profile of Rajnath Singh, president of India's Bharatiya Janata Party, is likewise "sourced from wikipedia.org."

An OSC report last year on the leader of the terrorist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran, noted that he and his wife "have two children, a girl and a boy. According to wikipedia.com, the boy is named Charles Anthony and the girl, Duwaraha."

Let's take a step back here for a second.  Secrecy News claims that this Wikipedia-supported report was written by the OSC for the Director of National Intelligence.  According to its website, this is what the DNI does:

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) serves as the head of the Intelligence Community (IC). The DNI also acts as the principal advisor to the President; the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security; and oversees and directs the implementation of the National Intelligence Program.

The OSC provides support to policymakers with media analysis and reporting.

If this rumor is true, I find it incredibly shocking (disappointing?) that key US intelligence agencies would use Wikipedia for such basic information about foreign officials.  Secrecy News notes that it's a "healthy development" for the government to be paying attention to "unorthodox" sources like Wikipedia.  I see the author's point here: there is definitely value in the fact the government is paying attention to the information accessible by everyday Americans.  However, does this information have a place in formal intelligence?  I don't think it does. 

Not to beat a dead horse, but the very feature that makes Wikipedia such a popular source (anyone can edit the entries) results in the site being completely and utterly unreliable.  I hope the DNI realizes that any person in the entire world could have written those entries in Wikipedia, making the information contained in them extremely questionable, if not probably inaccurate. 

In a related topic, I found a (slightly older) article on The Guardian's website this morning that reports that Wikipedia is also being used in research by American judges:

A search of court decisions by the New York Times turned up more than 100 rulings that have cited the online encyclopedia since 2004, including 13 from the circuit court of appeals, one rung beneath the supreme court.

This is ridiculous.  Would you really want a court decision that affected you to be decided by a Wikipedia article?  I think not. 

Possibly more disturbing than the thought officials are using Wikipedia without knowing the nature of the site is that officials understand the site's questionable content and are using it anyway:

In one instance cited by the [New York Times], a decision from a Chicago appeals court cited Wikipedia in a drugs case – even though the judge, Richard Posner, had first-hand experience of its unreliability. One entry had said the conservative commentator Ann Coulter had been his law clerk. Mr Posner has never met her. (Via the Guardian)

Wow. And we thought we had problems when college kids were citing Wikipedia in papers.

This is  not to say that Wikipedia is useless.  It is a great source to use as a gateway to other information, and I certainly disagree with those like Ted Stevens who think it should be banned.  But as it stands, the "encyclopedia" should not be used as a scholarly, official, or any other type of source.  Personally, I think everyone should just enjoy Wikipedia the way it is, and value it for its community and entertainment values.  However, the general public seems to keep pushing for changes to the site to ensure the accuracies of entries.  Ray Grieselhuber from USC's Online Journalism Review has several great ideas for accomplishing this.  Briefly:

1. Enforce standards;
2. Make editors disclose their names;
3. Supply references and reasons for content change;
4. Make citations clear;
5. Allow the rating of contributors;
6. Settle copyright disputes ahead of time.

All of these simple steps would certainly discourage vandalism on Wikipedia and would help add to the accuracy of articles.  I tend to think, however, that the most effective change is not changing the structure or rules of Wikipedia, but rather changing the way people view the site from a source of information to a source of links and entertainment.