Week 6: Weighing in on Wikipedia

I found Stacy Schiff’s article, Know It All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? so thought-provoking that I decided to post a separate blog about my reactions to it and my thoughts about Wikipedia in general.  

Why is Wikipedia so popular? A number of people brought up great points in our chat last night. The very fact that, as of 2006, it had 1 million articles versus Britannica’s 120,000 says a lot about its incredible breadth. Is there a topic not covered in Wikipedia – not many, for sure! And who can beat its currency! As Larry Sanger points out in Schiff’s article, “Wikipedia beats everything when it comes to breadth, efficiency and accessibility.” Amen! Schiff also brought up a really good point, arguing that Wikipedia’s greatest achievement may be the creation of a community. Last night Amanda asked why people contribute to Wikipedia. I’ve been thinking about this idea since and wonder if people’s need for community may be part of the reason.

Wikipedia highlights the issue of control versus freedom that can be problematic in wikis. Should a wiki be a free for all or should there be some rules? Interestingly Wikipedia has moved further and further away from its origins as a tool of unfettered democracy. Now it has admins, arbitration committees and oversight functions. As Schiff points out, it has become a “regulatory thicket.” Is this good or bad? As attractive as complete freedom sounds in theory, I think that in practice there needs to be some sort of oversight in a tool as large as Wikipedia.

In our chat last night, people commented on the negativity surrounding Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is really useful for some things and not as great for others. Do I consult it? All the time! It is a wonderful tool for finding information about a topic I am unfamiliar with. Would I cite it in a bibliography? No, but I wouldn’t cite Britannica either. If I am going to cite someone, I am not going to rely on an unnamed source. I want to know that the source I am citing is credible. I don’t want to find out that, as was the case in Schiff’s article, the Wikipedia author who posed as a professor in a private university, is a 24 year-old with no postgraduate training!

Here is what I don’t like about Wikipedia:

1) it is uneven – difficult to know which facts are utterly reliable or not 2) the bulk of the content, as Schiff points out, originates on the web – there’s a whole other world outside the web! 3) the present tends to take precedent over the past, again as Schiff points out – this is one area where other encyclopaedias take the lead.  Larry Sanger is quoted in the article as saying that “too many Wikipedians are fundamentally suspicious of experts and unjustly confident of their opinions.” And in the academic world the suspicions are reversed. I think there is a role for both amateurs and professionals. Academia needs to recognize this.