These days there is a lot of hand-wringing about Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that --at least up til recently-- was editable by absolutely anyone. Predictably, this open-source information approach had some weak points. Some people trashed entries which then had to be restored from historical archives, and some people apparently edited entries about themselves to boost their reputation in ways that others regarded as unfair, improper, or misleading. Even the founder of Wikipedia is reported to have engaged in this sort of nefarious ego-editing.

Whether it has problems or not, a lot of intelligent people have started using Wikipedia. Even judges have cited to it in certain cases. Should we be concerned about this?

Well, first of all we obviously are concerned, which is why there has been so much discussion about how to improve Wikipedia. I am among those who hope that Wikipedia's founder improves the quality control regarding the review of information that gets posted. But, I'm less concerned about the current state of affairs than many people. And I'm sure that sounds weird coming from a lawyer.

Here's why I'm not so concerned. Recently, I read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman (a book I highly recommend) and among the many tantalizing points was this one: societies that have no natural resources are more adaptable and tend to do better over the long haul (countries that have oil as an abundant natural resource are in the worst position). The reason I point this out is to provoke thought about whether it's best to have a system that lets certain people be lazy and not resourceful or one that encourages more people to be clever.

I would submit that one of the skills that law school does an excellent job of teaching is the skill of being skeptical. One reason that so many of the so-called war-bloggers are lawyers is that they are more likely to question propositions put forth by the mainstream media, and to describe the source of their skepticism in an organized way. Obviously, you don't have to be a lawyer to be a skeptic, but the legal training helps refine one's skepticism, as well as one's ability to articulate the basis for that skepticism.

I would suggest that our powerful press has been somewhat like a great natural resource, one that has given us a wonderful society, one where important information has been ferreted out and pre-analyzed for us. One great tool that the MSM has always had and used is access to people with expertise. So for many years now we've been able to rely on our press to figure things out for us and give us solid information. Not many countries have had such an abundant resource of information. But might be a hidden cost to this resource: it may have made some of us more complacent than we should be.

Sure, Watergate shed us of a lot of innocence, as did other political scandals. Certainly, as a nation, we are skeptical about a lot of things. But we need to get better at articulating the source of our skepticism and we need to refine our sense of how and when to apply skepticism. We have reached a point where the mainstream media's ability to improve the quality of its reporting has reached a zenith. Ironically, this is occuring, it seems to me, just at the time that the internet is empowering more of us to do our own basic information gathering. The blogosphere is replete with experts, and now the challenge is for people to learn to do what reporters and other professional information gathers have learned to do: to figure out how to sort through supposedly expert information.

If Wikipedia is slightly, or even seriously, flawed then that's okay with me. I think that will give all of us just one more thing to practice our developing skills of skepticism.

When I read a Wikipedia entry, it would be nice to know who edited it. I think that's something that the Wikipedia editors should build into the system, and I'm sure in time they will. Or, if they don't, then someone will start a competing encyclopedia that does have more accountability. But, in the meantime, there is still a lot of utility in Wikipedia. Just the other day someone asked me what "The Taming of the Shrew" was about. I couldn't remember, even though I had read the play in college. I looked it up on Wikipedia and was able to refresh my recollection quickly. If the entry was slightly flawed it didn't matter, so I didn't need to crank up my "skeptical dial" to 11.

When I was in law school professors used to complain about summary materials such as Emmanuels on Constitutional Law, which were referred to as 'poop' because, as law professors disdainfully pointed out, they simply pooped out the law. Professors believed that these materials would stymie the intellectual development of fragile young law students. From what I can tell, it had no such effect. The best law students used them as simply one tool in an aresenal of learning approaches, which included going to class and taking notes, and reviewing old exams to figure out what areas of law a professor tended to be interested in etc.

As the world becomes more flat, to use Friedman's metaphor, (and less hierarchical) people are going to have to be more self-sufficient and personally resourceful. You have to rely on experts to some extent whenever you look for information, but you should never rely completely on any expert. So, if they ever 'fix' Wikipedia, I hope that its readers will still be skeptical and question the information that the find there. Same goes for any infomation, whether it's on the web or not.