Looking at my title for this post, it makes me think that many academics might believe it to be redundant. Isn’t all crowd sourced information found online a fake? It cannot be trusted. Who knows who is actually making these posts? Do they know what they’re talking about?

I’ve maintained my own reservations of crowd sourced knowledge, like Wikipedia, but the more I learn the more I see that inaccuracies or misrepresentations can be dealt with. The safety next is in the crowd. Sure there are people out there who deliberately place false information into sources, such as the John Sigenthaler example where false information was placed in his entry as a type of joke. It stayed a while but was eventually found. More on intentional fakes later. More likely are inaccuracies and less malicious misrepresentations. How are these to be handled in crowd source information?

It seems the best way is the crowd itself. From my own experience, many more academically inclined individuals believe that those participating in crowd sourcing are people with no knowledge. It is true they may have no academic credentials, but some are quite knowledgeable about certain events, ideas, people. Sometimes a bit too knowledgeable. The numerous editors and other Wikipedia users are quite thorough and quick in catching errors or misrepresentations. This is especially true in purely factual information, and it is in the purely factual where Wikipedia has its strengths, which was made clear by Roy Rosenzweig in his article “Can History Be Open Sourced?” These numerous editors and contributors can be considered the peer reviewers of the crowd sourced encyclopedias.

It is in historical interpretation where things get messier in crowd sourcing, and where it may be more difficult to the “peer reviewers” to be helpful. Interpretation must go beyond the purely factual, and here is where academic historians may find the crowd sourcing to be truly problematic. Calling out misrepresentations can be difficult and lead to, as David Auerbach said, “a rancorous, sexist, elitist, stupidly bureaucratic mess.” However, anyone who has gone through an blind, academic, peer review process could probably say the same thing. Yeah, I’m talking about you “reviewer #2!”

No system is perfect and we must also consider the intent of the sources, especially intended audience. People are curious and often have very specific questions they’re looking to have answered. How did the asteroid belt form? Who is John Sigenthaler? What the heck are Digital Humanities anyway? Crowd sourced knowledge is quite beneficial in answering these questions AND in leading people to more sources and information to go further in their queries. Research of a brand new topic, especially for students, usually starts with reference sources, and crowd sourced knowledge like Wikipedia provides a good source that is available to anyone who has internet access (who has internet access is another issue and one highlighted during the pandemic.)

Then there are the truly malicious attempts to pass off a source as authentic that is really not. Although advances in technology seem to make this more prevalent, fakes are nothing new. From the Hitler diaries to the recently revealed Vinland map fake at Yale’s Beinecke library (although this came as no real shock to many scholars) fakes have been around, and scholars, especially librarians and archivists, remain alert to their presence. Of course now it’s not a single material object that can be faked, but a video, sound recording, photograph, etc. and these technological fabrications can be spread far and wide via social media in particular.

It seems simple to merely dismiss all use of technology in such a manner as unethical and unacceptable, but, like with so much else, once you dig a little deeper, it gets a bit more complicated. Is using software that can recreate Anthony Bourdain’s voice in order for it to “read” some of Anthony Bourdain’s words the same as using that same technology to have Bourdain seemingly say things like “McDonald’s is the only decent restaurant in the world!” They do not seem equivalent in intent.

Photoshop allows users to doctor images like never before. But is this the first time photography has misled? Famed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady rearranged scenes of fallen soldiers before shooting the picture. This was purposeful intent and would be quite problematic today. At that time the technology was still new especially in “photojournalism” and the rules yet to be written. So do we just need a new set of rules to deal with this technology? Who gets to write them and how do they keep up with the rapidly changing technology? Can I answer these questions? No. Maybe we should crowdsource it? You can check out Deepfake on Wikipedia and see what it has to say.