Is 99.9% correct good enough? The question has been brought up by a few blogs in the last few days, all of which are a buzz with love or hate for citizen journalists. In case you missed it, an incorrect (fake?) report on CNN’s iReporter, a citizen journalist site, stated that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. The news sent the stock down almost 10% and led to many critiques of the worth of citizen journalists.
My ever favorite thinker, Chris Brogan, defends citizen journalists saying:
Here’s a magical truth: information isn’t always accurate. NASA once made an inches/centimeters error that cost billions. I live in Boston, where the Big Dig was loaded with mistakes, miscalculations, and billions of dollars in rework. Airplanes are off course 90+ % of the time. Most of the flight is a course correction. Practically nothing in our day is 100% accurate all the time, not even ourselves
My question to Chris is, shouldn’t we strive for 100%? Is not being ok with imortant errors a way for us to grow a service or make it way better?
I found a really interesting Inc. Magazine article from April 1989 (ancient!) titled “Why 99.9% just wont Do“. The author gives us examples of what would happend if things were done right only 99.9% of the time:
* 1 hour of unsafe drinking water every month;
* 2 unsafe plane landings per day at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago;
* 16,000 pieces of mail lost by the U.S. Postal Service every hour;
* 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions per year;
* 500 incorrect surgical operations each week;
* 50 newborn babies dropped at birth by doctors every day;
* 22,000 checks deducted from the wrong bank accounts each hour;
* 32,000 missed heartbeats per person per year.Suddenly, the quest for zero defects makes a lot of sense. . . .
Though information is indeed imperfect, the quest for perfection is important. While citizen journalists should not be held to a NASA standard, the story reminds us that somethings aren’t a source of perfection. Lets just thank (insert mightier than thou figure here) that some things are correct more than 99.9% of the time.
Photo Credit: The Happy Robot
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