Wikipedia is an ocean of information and Twitter the most popular microblogging platform. On the occasion of Twitter's 13th birthday, Wikipedia has an important life lesson for Twitter that has also been one of the hottest debates in recent history.
Almost all social media platforms allow users to edit posts after they've been published. But Twitter is unfamiliar to that notion and once a mistake is made, it either stays on the platform forever or taken down with a hope that no one saw it or reposted the error with the power of screenshots.
For long, users have demanded Twitter to introduce an edit button for tweets, but the sheer amount of disregard to the feature has led many to drop hopes in its anticipation. But a respectable name in the web industry has joined the fight for #TwitterNeedsAnEditButton, reviving those lost hopes all over again.
Wikipedia's official Twitter handle tweeted on Friday to its 400+ thousand followers about a historic moment when Twitter was founded on this day 13 years ago. When Twitter replied to that tweet saying "Love that you know us so well," which is not a surprise considering it is Wikipedia, the following response by the online information bank is everything netizens wanted to hear.
Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia created and edited by volunteers around the world, touted its edit feature and took a jibe at Twitter for not having the "mystical edit button."
Will Twitter finally take this advice and introduce the much-awaited edit button for tweets? Only time will tell. But if Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder, is to be believed, the lack of an "Edit Tweet" button is one of its ways to curb fake news. An editing tool would allow people to change tweets that first broke the story.
"How do we enable people to quickly go back... and to add some context and some color on what they might have tweeted or what they might have meant. By doing so you might imagine that the original tweet then would not have the sort of engagement around it. Like you wouldn't be able to retweet the original tweet, for instance. You would just show the clarification, you would be able to retweet the clarification, so it always carries around with it that context," Dorsey had said at a Goldman Sachs event in San Francisco in February.
A clarification feature certainly works better given the nature of Twitter. But that hasn't stopped users and even celebs from pleading for an edit button. For instance, reality TV star Kim Kardashian West said she discussed the option of an edit button with Dorsey at one of the birthday parties last year.
What are your thoughts on Twitter getting an edit button? Let us know.
