One way to fight Fake News is going through fact addiction

All over the World, the Fake News is in more focus. The debate on how to prevent, fight and prohibit political driven fake news from influence in the democratic process is in discussed. WOK is part of the fight against fake news.

Several measures are taken place. We believe censorship is not the right way forward. The power of truth and facts has always throughout history been a struggle of those who claim the truth and those who seek the truth and use scientific methods to prove it. Some truth can be true to other people out of perspective, beliefs and religious conviction. In the generation growing up today, social media is a vital part of life and news consumption. There are political influencers who want to establish truth where there is none by actively producing fake news. How to determine fake news from true and balanced news is not always easy. Some governments have established funds to help "the true" news media from being the grant to the public access of the truth. In doing so they have taken the role of being above and in many cases left their critical eye on their own handling of the truth. All news outlets have an agenda and why should the public trust one source and not the other just because one claim to print and send the truth through printed press and TV and social media. 

Critical views and source control is a key element in fighting Fake News. Wikipedia is highly ranked as a trusted source all over the World albeit or just because it is crowdsourced based system. The information is evaluated and sources are checked by the numerous of Wikimedians doing a granular job. Of course, false information slips through the net when everybody can produce a Wikipedia article and not all articles are carefully checked. But in general and overall Wikipedia trustworthiness is based on the overwhelming amount of articles that are true and balanced and therefore easy to read, understand and summarize a topic, an event or a fact. 

If more people read more Wikipedia articles and followed the sources from a Wikipedia article and got into the depth of the subjects covered on Wikipedia, the fake news would be less read, less believed and had a less negative impact on society. 

The focus of Wikipedia Movement as a movement for free information and trustworthiness would lay in the notion that more people would read and learn from Wikipedia articles. The Founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales has started his new project WikiTribune in order to fight fake news by producing correct and balanced news. This is one way forward. The World of Knowledge project WOK and its founder Erik Bolinder believes that making Wikipedia articles at large more attractive would have a much greater impact than starting a news service. Using the power of hundreds of thousands of Wikimedians to make Wikipedia even more attractive to the younger generation that is marinated with social media, gaming and have the mobile smartphone device in their hands 24/7 would be a much more powerful way to fight fake news.  

If we can make the Wikipedia Movement more engaged in the WOK project of bringing Wikipedia into the mix of social media, gamification with WikiMaster and WikiFlip and make curiosity a serotonin addiction just as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat; the World would be a better place and fake news would be less contagious. 

This might be a dream as John Lennon Imagine song and a utopia but this is why the World of Knowledge and WikiMaster app would deserve stronger support from the Wikipedia community at large than today. WOK sees itself as a vital part of the Wikipedia movement, but the Wikipedia movement does not see WOK as a vital part of Wikipedia. There are clear signs that this is about to change and we hope that this process takes less time than necessary. 

A World is full of fact addicts playing quiz games on top of Wikipedia articles in the Knowledge Network WOK reading and learning in the strive to get WOKbits is Wikipedia on turbocharging. All the millions of man-hours spent by Wikimedians in creating the articles and correct WikiData entries being transformed into facts by playing quiz games. 

 

Erik Bolinder, April 8, 2018.  

 

More links about this subject :

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/outlook/conspiracy-videos-fake-news-enter-wikipedia-the-good-cop-of-the-internet/2018/04/06/ad1f018a-3835-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html

 

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Tags: fake news