If the students digitizing card catalogs were careless, if they were irreverent, and if they discarded the handwritten notations, each of those are simply and honestly tragedies. However, there do exist people who were devoutly reverent to all aspects of libraries even during their college years, and I will hold myself up as an example.

These days, if a library was moving from a card catalog to a database, they could simply put the cards into a scanner one tall stack at a time, and the machine could automatically feed through each card, read off the ISBN, and make a local copy of that book’s complete record from one central database, including keywords, author, title, and so on.

When I read his case, he was persuasive. I feared he was the canary in the coal mine, and we were indeed doomed to lose all of this knowledge. Now I see that data can be mined and appended as easily as flipping through cards and marking them with tiny pencil notations (easier, in fact). He forgot that with the new databases comes the ability to correct as you go, so like the living document whose loss he was decrying, the database itself would be refined, nurtured and improved. By whom? Librarians, of course, who in another generation will look at physical card catalogs as we do rolls of lamb skin.

So, where are you teaching it and how can I attend?

But more broadly in response, it’s not Wikipedia itself that’s the grand repository, but rather the fact that wikis can be used as effective encyclopedias. Mediawiki did not pioneer the wiki, after all.

Taken differently, keep an eye on the E.O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life. What he’s got is effectively a highly specialized Wikipedia catered towards academia.

Could you provide some examples of subjects where admins are unfairly silencing the more correct minority view? Editors who maintain civility and attempt to make sure significant minority views are accurately represented based on published sources, and who accept that the Wikipedia article should take a he said/she said tone without coming down on one side or the other, are welcomed and appreciated.

You say the problem is that “Wikipedia does not permit flame wars – even when a flame war is the only honest representation of the current state of consensus on the issue.” I lost the thread of your argument here. Flame wars are what happens between editors with rival viewpoints; on a subject with sharply divided viewpoints, editors should still remain civil. The article itself should certainly never be a flame war, even if it describes a bitter dispute between advocates of different viewpoints. There’s a difference between an article describing a flame war and being one, and Wikipedia has no use for the latter kind of article.

For WebComics, in particular, these two blog entries might be of interest:
http://www.websnark.com/archives/2005/10/on_the_other_ha_15.html
http://www.websnark.com/archives/2006/10/time_for_the_ye.html

You say:
“But why do purported experts spend so much time arguing against it rather than helping make it a better resource? It is free! It is accessible! Is it really worth that much prestige to write an encyclopedia article instead of writing a Wikipedia entry?”

The answer as I see it is:
“The more that true experts on given fields feel like their input is not only disregarded but dismissed in an effort to be egalitarian, the more that said experts will simply stop writing for Wikipedia.”

They don’t make it better because they don’t like to see their hard work randomly deleted by people with no experience in the topic, but a lot more free time.

I recently completed a Masters of Business and Information Technology. It was interesting that some lecturers used Wikipedia and others didn’t. It was good for basic Economic and business theories I wasn’t aware of, histories of certain people, but it was the starting point .. not “the” source of truth.

In my field of IT security, most Wikipedia articles relating to “what things are” are less biased than corporate information on the same topic. Providers of information have some bias either peer respect, sales revenue, etc.

So back to Danah’s ponint .. It’s one source of information but not the only one.

Another point I think worth mentioning, is sometimes academic meterial is not that readable. Some material that was handed to us in class (Organisation Learning and Management topics seemed to be the worst) took hours and a dictionary to read a 20 page article. People can talk about expert advice and information, but if it can’t be understood easily .. then where does that leave the knowledge seeker or student.

I would argue that popularity of wikipedia is also due to it’s accessibility.

I think it boils down to many sources of information provide a better result.

I don’t call myself a Marxist, not because of any great disagreements with Marx, although I have minor ones, but simply to avoid alienating the vast masses who believe that all Marxists are Communists. On the other hand, I do call myself a socialist, so I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere.

Is it “racked with guilt” or “wracked with guilt”? Google says 43K of the first and 59K of the second, which is apropos here but not quite an answer. Also, I know it does take time and effort for intellectual knowledge to become emotional belief, but I hope you know that the trouble is not that you were born to power and knowledge, but that others weren’t. And I hope that becomes a belief, and leaves you with hope and determination to improve the world, not guilt that it’s imperfect.

“Now that we can get information to people faster and with greater barriers”– should that be “and over greater barriers”?

“Is it really worth that much prestige to write an encyclopedia article instead of writing a Wikipedia entry?” Be aware that very much unlike Britannica, Wikipedia has a policy against “original content,” so academics relying on personal expert knowledge would need to post an article on their own websites, then integrate the information into the Wikipedia article, and link from Wikipedia back to their own page. Wikipedia is increasingly guarding against lies by the time-honored academic tradition of the citation. Students shouldn’t cite Wikipedia, but they should use Wikipedia to get the gist of a topic, follow the Wikipedia page’s links to the real sources, and cite those. And improve the Wikipedia page when they come face to face with glaring errors, if they’re willing.

The genius of discussion, academia, the internet, and Wikipedia, each of which grew from the one before, is not that all participants are wise and speak the truth, but that the process itself sorts truth from falsehood. As Jan Sandred says, that’s critical thinking, and that’s education.

As far as elitism and greed destroying faith in public goods, let’s not forget that Wikipedia, like any other encyclopedia, requires money to function, and unlike most other encyclopedias, it relies entirely on the charity of Google, its users, and the public. The fact that it exists at all is a testament to people overcoming greed and elitism, perhaps even more so than Britannia.

Steve: I think Wikipedia articles on topics of controversy *could* be handled well by presenting both sides briefly, with links to more information. But neither side is willing to be a footnote, and so the page explodes into an endless argument. The page isn’t useless because it’s an argument. It’s useless because it’s endless. That said, although Wales and company usually exercise lenient and sound judgment, they have certainly been arbitrary and autocratic many times, even over such pettiness as whether webcomic authors may have pages.

Phil: I think it’s an oversimplification to say that “Wikipedia anonymity has shown… that people really don’t like anonymity.” Whistle-blowers looking to send a safe one time hit and run message, for example tipping off the GAO to audit a particular government department for massive embezzlement, need real anonymity. People who participate in online discussions of their experiences with sex and drugs and politics, or discussions of most anything else with even a hint of controversy, need a consistent, verifiable alias, which is not linked to any known real person, and that seems to be the best fit for most Wikipedia editors. And people who are firmly in their comfort zone can simply use their primary “real person” identity online.

I think Wikipedia is becoming a publicly maintained index and summary of the webpages of groups and individuals who are authorities. Writing an encyclopedia article on a topic in your field, and adding a summary of it and a link to it on the appropriate Wikipedia page, could go on a cv, although unlike Britannica, the author won’t get paid, and from a cv viewpoint it would just be an unpublished original article.

“In effect, they are stating, as a matter of principle, that their mission is not to discover truth but to codify a consensus of the conventional wisdom. This hits those of us on the minority side of controversial subjects because there is likely to be a lot of perfectly verifiable published misinformation on the topic in question. The majority view will be seen as authoritative.”

I see the problem you’re pointing out, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem unique to Wikipedia. Aren’t all encyclopedias this way, and isn’t this how the academy works in the ink & paper world as well?

Good thoughts.

I share Dr. Gorman analysis, but disagree about the cure. And I completely agree with Danah Boyd’s view on teaching, learning and the role of academics.

Here in Sweden schools not only use wikipedias (the platform, not necessarily sv.wikipedia.org) in the education, but also encourage the students to contribute to the shared knowledge. And the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement encourages it. http://www.skolutveckling.se/in_english/

The Swedish school curriculum emphasizes life-long learning and sustainable development. There is an emphasis on the individual’s responsibility for learning and thus the demand for “learn how to learn” throughout life.

A common approach here is “learning by discovery”. That gives each student great responsibility to develop their work, but also imposes very high demands on facilitating and developing their skills in planning. Problem based learning starts from a given case and attempts to explain phenomena that are being questioned. Knowledge grows as work progresses. Wikipedia and collaborative software are often used.

This way of working also imposes demands on pupils’ ability to think critically and questioningly. And of course critical thinking is an important part of the learning process in Swedish schools.

This is a major step forward to steer teaching away from focusing on production and focus instead on the importance of the process itself. This requires methodical and focused facilitation. It requires time for reflection, both between the teachers (the academics) and together with students. Reflection is an important part of learning.

This discussion is also part of the Swedish school’s work on foundation values. What values are implicit in different sources in different media? What values do we have?

The ability to find information relevant to answering our own questions is a part of living in a democracy. Wikipedia is one important tool in this process, but it also requires critical readers as it does with all kinds of media.

/Jan Sandred
Program Manager
Innovation Actors Division
VINNOVA, Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems

Because I could give a 20-credit course on ‘how Wikipedia works’ and not get to the bottom of it. It’s complex. It’s interesting. I happen to believe it’s an almighty mess, but it’s a very complex and interesting mess. For practical purposes “Don’t cite it” is quicker.

Wikipedia is not perfect. But why do purported experts spend so much time arguing against it rather than helping make it a better resource?

This is a false opposition: two different activities with different timescales, different skillsets and different rewards. I get an idea, I write it down – generally it won’t let me go until I’ve written it down. I look at what I’ve written down, and I want to rewrite it – quite often it won’t let me go until I’ve rewritten it. All of this takes slabs of time, but they’re slabs of time spent engrossed with ideas and language, my own and other people’s – and the result is a real and substantial contribution to a conversation, by an identifiable speaker.

I look at a bad Wikipedia article and I don’t know where to start. What I’d like to do is delete the whole thing and put in the stub of a decent article that I can come back to later, but I sense that this will be regarded as uncool. What I don’t want to do is clamber through the existing structure of an entry I think shouldn’t have been written in the first place correcting an error here or there, because that’s a long-drawn-out task that’s both tedious and unrewarding. And what I particularly don’t want to do is return to the article again and again over a period of weeks because my edits are getting reverted by someone hiding behind a pseudonym.

(I think what Wikipedia anonymity has shown, incidentally, is that people really don’t like anonymity. Wikipedia has produced its own stable identities – and its own authorities, based on the reputation particular Wikipedia editors have established within the Wikipedia community.)

Is it really worth that much prestige to write an encyclopedia article instead of writing a Wikipedia entry?

Well, yes. If I get a journal article accepted or I’m commissioned to write an encyclopedia article, I’m joining an established conversation among fellow experts. What I’ve written stays written and gets cited – in other words, it contributes to the conversation, and hence to the formation of the cloud of knowledge within the discipline. And it goes on my c.v. – because it can be retrieved as part of a reviewable body of work. If I write for Wikipedia I don’t know who I’m talking to, nobody else knows who’s writing, and what I’ve written can be unwritten at any moment. And it would look ridiculous on my c.v. – because they’ve only got my word that it is part of my body of work, assuming it still exists in the form in which I wrote it.

The way things are now, knowledge lives in domain-sized academic conversations, which are maintained by gatekeepers and authorities. Traditional encyclopedias make an effort to track those conversations, at least in their most recently crystallised (serialised?) form. Wikipedia is its own conversation with its own authorities and its own gatekeepers. For the latest state of the Wikipedia conversation to coincide with the conversation within an established domain of knowledge is a lucky fluke, not a working assumption.

(Also posted at my blog, because it’s got a bit too long for a comment box.)