Stephen Asunka

Wikipedia vis-a-vis Ethics on the Internet

Wikipedia has been compelled to tighten its rules for submission of articles following a complaint that an article falsely accusing someone was published in the online encyclopedia. See story. This is one of the downsides of anonymity and invisibility, as well as the low barriers to publishing in cyberspace.

In an article - "Ethics on the Internet: A comparative study of Japan, the US and Singapore" which appears in Feenberg and Barney's book: Community in the Digital Age - Yumiko Nara and Tetsuji Iseda outlined their findings when they investigated online behavior in the three countries. One interesting finding they made was that "the more the respondents are aware of the anonymity, invisibility and uncertainty of the internet, the more undesirably they tend to behave." Though they emphasize that this is just a statistical result, it should not be surprising as it is the nature of the human being - we tend to misbehave more only if we are sure that we may never be caught.

As it stands now the authors of Wikipedia have no idea whoever posted the article. But requesting that users should register before being allowed to submit articles is more or less a futile attempt control unethical behavior - as the mischievous people are the ones who will submit "authentic" registration particulars in the first place.

posted by Steve @ 2:57 PM