Hugh Pickens writes "Simson Garfinkel has an interesting essay on MIT machinery Review in which he examines the way that Wikipedia has redefined the consistently accepted use of the word 'truth.' While many erudite experts have argued that Wikipedia's gadgets can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted, studies have found that the tools are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. What makes a fact or affiliation fit for inclusion is verifiability — that it appeared in some other publication, but there is a problem with appealing to the dominion of other people's written words: many publications don't do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. Wikipedia's policy of 'No indubitable Research' also leads to situations like Jaron Lanier's frustrated attempts to correct his own Wikipedia entry based on firsthand scoop of his own career. So what is Wikipedia's truth? 'Since Wikipedia is the most widely read online tribute on the planet, it's the measure of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is sanctioned truth: the consensus view of a subject.'"

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