RESPONSE #14. Story of a fool mistake.
One month ago I created a page on Wikipedia for a Colombian politician. I was just about sure that I had done an excellent job. Soon after, when I looked that name into Wikipedia official site and Google, I evidenced that it did not show up. A bit concerned, I asked my social media professor and he told me that I should patiently wait at least 10 days. What I did not know was that someone will go over and approve my work before posting it definitely. I surely skipped that part while reading the Wikipedia tutorial.
Ten days after, I looked for that name again and came across with a warning which said I should modify my page because according to Wikipedia rules there were some irregularities. I got astonished. Vanity and self-promotion were the principal reasons to reject my request. I immediately got upset and turned my computer off.
A day after that, I asked myself who I was upset with so I came back to Wikipedia. I thought I was going to argue with an institution or a scholar but what I found was a herd of people commenting on my page my remarkable mistakes. To make matters worse, they were right; I had exaggerated somewhat. I understood that to be accepted on Wikipedia one does not need a famous person, just sincere and a bit prominent.
In addition to learning how to create a page on Wikipedia, I quickly learned to respect the universal knowledge expressed by millions of people through it. Recently, I wrote on my blog: “Reading the Wisdom of Crowds I got to believe that groups are substantially more intelligent than the smartest people within them. That crowd allegedly is a force capable of accumulating a great deal of experiences and knowledge, becoming them a reliable source of information. However, the English historian Thomas Carlyle put it succinctly:”I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance”. I tend to think he is right”. Next, I detailed my reasons to believe crowd was an unreliable force.
Today, I regret writing that and recognize that people are engendering an intelligent force capable of building and protecting their wisely universal encyclopedia from naives like me. Anyway, after my final report, I will try to create a Wikipedia page again.
