Crowd Sourcing, the practice of letting the general public perform mutually beneficial work for free, has one major flaw: The crowd is made up of humans. There is no guarantee that a contributor is not an idiot. Wikipedia has locked its own page on Wikipedia Reliability to prevent idiots from messing it up. Here at The Daily Quarterly we assume everyone is an idiot until they can prove otherwise.
Steubenville, OH—When news broke earlier this month that a particular page on Wikipedia that had been on the site for more than five years was a hoax, students all over the world were taken aback that something like this could happen to a website known as a trusted, reliable tool in getting students better grades on papers and on homework assignments.
For five years, a page on the “Bicholim Conflict” duped students and Wikipedia editors alike into thinking the conflict between Portugal and the Indian Marath Empire that took place between 1640 and 1641 was real. But a little digging by one skeptical Wikipedia editor has blown the lid off the hoax, and shaken the faith of students who turned to Wikipedia when their own sad scholastic attempts failed miserably.
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