Twenty one years later,  academia, Wikipedia still tussle on credibility 

At 7.43am on January 2, as many people were struggling to start the day after New Year celebrations, the tense associated with former Attorney General Charles Njonjo on his Wikipedia entry changed from “is” to “was”.

This was three hours before a local media house broke news of the centenarian’s death. 

A look at Wikipedia’s edit logs shows that there was some push-and-pull among the people from across the world who camped at Njonjo’s page to make edits before his death was confirmed.

In fact, by 8.40am, the date of death had been deleted from his entry. It was returned two minutes later. Earlier at 7.51am, the tense was reverted to “is”, by one editor who felt the death had not been established. 

Four minutes later, Lodwar-based digital entrepreneur Patrick Kasirim restored the tense to “was”. The Saturday Nation interviewed him about it.

It was until 10.06am when a local media house broke the story on its website that the matter was put to rest and a link provided to “prove” Njonjo’s demise.

On the same day, paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey’s tense changed at 4.07pm. It was until 4.34pm that the official source of the information – State House Kenya – was added as a link on Leakey’s page.

The edits on Njonjo and Leakey’s pages reflect the weakness and strength of Wikipedia – an online open-source encyclopaedia that went live on a date like today in 2001.

Whereas it can be quickly updated to reflect realities unlike traditional repositories of knowledge, it is also prone to unverified information and vandalism. 

Reports of Wikipedia entries being edited to give a humorous bend are in plenty. There was an edit to describe one man as “half man, half cocaine”; a pop artiste as having “died of embarrassment” (and she is still alive); an actress who “fell out of the sky as an angel” because of her beauty; a politician whose photo was included in a chart for invertebrates; among others.

False information

Wikipedia says on a page about itself that some forms of vandalism are difficult to detect.

“The most common and obvious types of vandalism include additions of obscenities and crude humour. It can also include advertising and other types of spam,” it says. 

“Less common types, such as the deliberate addition of plausible but false information, can be more difficult to detect.”

Academics detest Wikipedia. Students are told not to cite Wikipedia as a source for anything, but according to Dr Robert Wesonga, a Literature don at the University of Kabianga, learners just won’t just avoid it.

“The moment a student who doesn’t have experience on which websites to look for hits the ‘search’ button, one of the first results that shows up is from Wikipedia,” Dr Wesonga said yesterday.  

“There is that tendency to just go straight on and try and extract content from that very website which happens to be Wikipedia most of the time.”

He says it is very common among young students. 

“We usually advise that they look for credible information. They should look out for URLs or websites that look like university websites or information from websites or credible journals or PDF documents from those journals,” he added.

Last year, Wikipedia found itself in court proceedings relating to the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) constitutional amendment attempt.

High Court judges who slammed brakes on the BBI had mentioned it as a source in one of their observations.

“They (judges) resorted to Wikipedia as an authority. Wikipedia cannot be a reliable authority for anything serious,” Solicitor-General Kennedy Ogeto said.

Editing Wikipedia content

The problem many people have with Wikipedia is the fact that anyone can update it.

“Sometimes it has credible content. “But because of the issues raised, we always advise for checks. Students need to corroborate that information from Wikipedia,” Dr Wesonga said.

Having taken part in writing and editing Wikipedia content since last year, Patrick Kapus Kasirim, or PK Kasirim as he is popularly known, understands how much credibility he can assign to an entry.

One trick to it, he says, is gauging the number of sources cited.

“Before you make changes to Wikipedia, you must have vast knowledge on that subject. For instance, if I have something on PLO Lumumba, I can’t just provide skewed information using one story I picked somewhere then start editing. I must look for it from different sources and see if they match. If a big percentage concurs with the information, you go with that,” Mr Kasirim said.

“For Njonjo, I first read social media posts. But even as people post, you must get a credible news source like Nation, Citizen or Standard.”

Much as he was certain about Njonjo’s death before media houses and State House broke the news, Mr Kasirim says he relies on credible media stations.

“It’s all about judgement. When you study that source, you will establish where they got it from. Then you enquire from different sources,” he said.

Mr Kasirim became a Wikipedia contributor “out love for knowledge”.

“It started last year. I applied and got an approval. I then started making contributions. I think they were happy because my contributions were positive,” he said.

So, what moved him to edit Njonjo’s page?

Weeding out bad content

“It had not been updated because it was breaking news. I quoted the Standard as the source,” he said.

Wikipedia editors like Mr Kasirim act on distortions as quickly as possible.

“If it is accurate and you provide a source, the people who revise to confirm accuracy will agree with you,” he said.

Wikipedia’s editing bots can intervene in case of grammatical errors.

On every Wikipedia page, a log is provided showing all edits ever done. It shows how the page looked before and after an update.

“Other collaborative online encyclopaedia were attempted before Wikipedia, but none were as successful,” Wikipedia says on its page.

“Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001. It is the largest and most-read reference work in history and consistently one of the 15 most popular websites ranked by Alexa. As of 2021, Wikipedia was ranked the 13th most popular site (in the world).”

But even as it improves its editing timeframes and its editors get more proactive in weeding out bad content, it will take time for it to be accepted in the academia.

“I don’t think Wikipedia can overtake the traditional sources of knowledge,” Dr Wesonga said.

“I will admit that there are times I also use Wikipedia. I can’t deny that we don’t use it. But we always make sure that we try and check this information against information from other sources, which then means that in a sense, for those scholars that are established, Wikipedia is still subordinate to other sources,” he said.

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