Not so long ago, young people starting saying, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”
Somehow, people over 30 weren’t relevant anymore. They were conservative. They didn’t want your hair touching your collar, or they didn’t want you dating that hair-touching-collar guy.
That attitude is still around. I’d like to update it.
Just like anyone else, some people over 30 do have important things to share. They know what they’re talking about. Perhaps we’d be better off if they did sell a few hair cuts.
I don’t think age has much to do with it (if anything, it’s probably the other way around). No, I have a different test:
“Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t trust Wikipedia.”
I didn’t do this on purpose. I realized it the other day when, yet again, someone told me that Wikipedia isn’t the most reliable source of information.
You know what I’m talking about. People who don’t trust Wikipedia trust academic journals instead. People who don’t trust Wikipedia read newspapers instead. People who don’t trust Wikipedia think the Internet is a scam, a waste of time… they watch TV instead.
Those are the people I don’t trust.
I get your drift. Just the other day I mentioned something about Iron Man 2 and someone asked, “How do you know?” When I admitted that I’d read spoilers on Wikipedia, they said, “Oh, so it’s not really for sure.”
I am a writing consultant at a public university. I know what journal articles look like and I know what crowdsourced data looks like.
It seems that the less authoritative data becomes, the more useful it becomes. People who fail to recognize the middle ground where reliability meets usability will be tossed to and fro by every contrary wind of doctrine, be it blowing from MySpace or from the mind-controlling media.
What about us old farts that don’t trust any source until we’ve checked it against several sources known to be reliable?
Trust TV? Uhh… no.
“But they have the video!”
“Want me to show you how fast I can drum up that same video, with a slant the other way? Gimme about five minutes!”
Yes, for some things, it’s a good idea to check multiple sources, but that’s usually not practical. So we have to trust something… and I think it’s a fairly clear division between those who are willing to trust Wikipedia in general and those who aren’t.
-Marshall Jones Jr.