How Do We Know?
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I was over at Propeller today tagging a blog post, and I thought, OK, so people are reading and plugging and tagging at all the other Web 2.0 sites we know because we found some information that pleased or satisfied us. Great.
How do we know it’s right? I mean, if somebody just takes it into their head to write about pygmy ponies with blonde manes, what qualifies them? I mean, do they just know about these things or do they really KNOW about them? I’m sure there are some writers who do enough research to know that what they’re writing about is real. Of course, you never know these days. Even people at the NY Times make things up.
But how many people are taking some of what they read as verbatim, when it’s nothing more than guessture or supposition? Kind of scary when you think about it. Talk about your Urban Legends.
Some of this stuff is legends of cyberspace.
How do you tell the difference? Hmmm… Your first bet would be to look at the writing. If it sucks, that’s almost a dead giveaway. People who are passionate about a subject can usually talk or write about it with ease. I’d say the majority of them. You know how you put your heart & soul into something that you could discuss all day long just because it’s fun.
But here’s the thing… Just because someone has 230 Diggs or 5,000 Stumbles upon, that doesn’t make the information right. It could be, it’s true. But it’s the ‘Net, people. Come on. Relying on sites like Wikipedia, for example, is just ludicrous. Do we really want the overwhelming insanity that we call the Internet to shape things that are so important? I mean, do we really know how many people voted on something because it was good or whether they’re just in the same buzz group?
Information is great, if it’s real. If it’s just information pretending to be real because a group of people say it is, then… to me, it’s totally useless.
Stop wasting bandwidth. Choose your Stumbles and Plugs wisely. If someone asks you to tag something, only do it if it makes sense to you. If what they’re asking you to tag just reeks, then, don’t do it.
Simple?
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Tags: information, social bookmarking, web 2.0