Your browser may have trouble rendering this page. See supported browsers for more information.

This page shows the source for this entry, with WebCore formatting language tags and attributes highlighted.

Title

Wikipedia Comes of Age

Description

<img src="{att_link}wikipedia_logo.png" align="left" class="frame">They say you're nobody until somebody hates you; it proves that you've gotten noticed and are having an effect, if nothing else. Wikipedia is an online, extremely complete and cross-linked encyclopedia built using the Wiki online collaberation software and available in several languages. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org">English Wikipedia</a> has 450,000 articles, while the <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org">German Wikipedia</a> has a respectable 188,000 articles. What's more, it's created completely by its users and visitors, constantly evolving and growing with no central guiding authority or plan. <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1386027,00.html" source="Guardian Unlimited" author="John Naughton">Why encyclopaedic row speaks volumes about the old guard</a> discusses the reaction of the <iq>old guard</iq> encyclopedia vendors, which can be summed up as being <iq>outraged by the notion that anything produced by hoi polloi could have lasting value.</iq> Encyclopedia Brittanica's official stance is a pseudo-scientific one stating that <iq>[t]he premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection...[t]hat premise is completely unproven.</iq> It is this type of assertion that will have people nodding in agreement because it sounds so smoothly convincing whereas one could just as easily say that "the premise of Brittanica is that rigorous controls and planning will lead to perfection...that premise is completely unproven". Done poorly, anything is going to suck. Duh. Another EB official compares an encyclopedia to a <iq>public restroom</iq> whose cleanliness only <iq>[lulls one] into a false sense of security</iq> (having gone to the <a href="{news}view_article.php?id=1052">Bill Gates School of Hyperbolic Metaphor</a>, perhaps). Well, at least with Wikipedia, you can assume that people from many walks of life and political/social/philosophical positions are contributing; a traditional encyclopedia has only the promise of objectivity, whereas the way that Wikipedia is built ensures at least a modicum of it. The proof, as they say (no idea why, they just say it), is in the pudding. The English version of Wikipedia has grown by about a third in the last year alone and the author suggests that the reader look up tsunami in both <a href="http://www.britannica.com/search?query=tsunami">Brittanica</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami">Wikipedia</a> and ask yourself which one you think is more informative. The corporate version which tries to get you to <i>sign up</i> to get more information? Or the open source version that gives you pages of information, including up-to-the-minute information on the recent tsunami in Indonesia? <a href="http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html" author="Robert McHenry" source="TCS">The Faith-Based Encyclopedia</a> offers a slightly more informed critique of the Wikipedia, delving into the way that content is added and moderated on the site. He's the author of the "public restroom" quote above. He notes that even Wikipedia's mission statement: <bq>Wikipedia's goal is to create a free encyclopedia ---- indeed, the largest encyclopedia in history, both in terms of breadth and depth and also to become a reliable resource.</bq> is an editable entry and can only be provably known to represent the <iq>view of the last person to modify it, and those of unknown others who have chosen not to modify it further</iq>. That Wikipedia openly admits that it is <iq>possible for biased, out of date or incorrect information to be posted</iq> makes it almost unique in the publishing world. How does a print encyclopedia guarantee any different? It is the reflection of the bias of the entry writer just as much as the Wikipedia entry is. It is simply imbued with a false sense of legitimacy because it comes from a "traditional" source. Just because it's in a book doesn't mean it is without bias and is the truth. Just because it's online doesn't mean it isn't reliable. That's why the Wikipedia actually has a better chance at accuracy, because it's not set in stone. However, to claim that <iq>the overall accuracy of the encyclopedia is improving all the time as it attracts more and more contributors</iq> (as Wikipedia does) is also not true. Simply watching obviously false memes being reinforced in other forms of media (Jesus is coming back, Saddam has WMD, etc.), one can imagine that it is just as easy for the opposite to be true. Remember, repetition is truth, so if enough people believe something, it's true. If those people build an encyclopedia, it doesn't make it the truth. This does not mean that it does <i>not</i> asymptotically approach the truth, simply that whether it does or not is not provable since we have no metric for truth. All we have is gut instinct for it; we can decide whether it jibes with other things we've heard, from other sources. We can see whether it fits in our worldview or not. Hell, just the fact that the Wikipedia is laid out nicely and formatted well makes it seem so official, doesn't it? Very believable. The author of the critique chooses the entry on Alexander Hamilton as a lodestone of accuracy and comes away sorely disappointed. The iterative nature of the Wikipedia means that many of the issues he raises have since been corrected --- in a response that is much quicker than a traditional publishing format could muster. In fact, it might be that the author of the critique himself corrected the entry. In an interesting twist, his examination of that entry shows that the collaberative concept holds up quite well, since one can now examine the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alexander_Hamilton">discussion for the Alexander Hamilton entry</a> to see the reaction to the article. The web eats itself. The answer to the question: <bq>How long does it take for an article to evolve into a "polished, presentable masterpiece," or even just into a usable workaday encyclopedia article?</bq> is not so simple. It doesn't happen overnight and it certainly can't happen for 450,000 entries simultaneously and with the same degree of accuracy. Instead of asking whether the Wikipedia today represents an absolute truth and deeming it a failure because it has not yet achieved it, ask instead whether it is as good a source as others online. I think the Wikipedia is a fascinating experiment and has grown to immense proportions in just three years. If only 10% of it is at all accurate after so short a time, it is still far ahead of other encyclopedias at that age (most of which have been published for decades, if not centuries). Those who are already calling the Wikipedia a failure have an unproven faith in other information sources and/or don't understand what asymptotic means. Give it time; it will come.