For the last couple of weeks, i’ve been watching the Wikipedia bru-ha-ha. As folks probably know, i got really upset a while back when folks were talking about Wikipedia being the essential collection of knowledge, meant to replace school books and other refereed knowledge containers. I still strongly believe that Wikipedia will not be that. But Jimmy Wales reminded me that Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia, not a library replacement. It should be the first source of information, not the last. It should be a site for information exploration, not the definitive source of facts. This convinced me and i developed a great deal of respect for the project and its intentions. Of course, i still get annoyed with Wikipedia obsessives who promote it as the panacea to all knowledge problems.
So, when i heard about Seigenthaler, i rolled my eyes. Welcome to being a public figure - people will say mean things about you on the web. None of it is guaranteed to be true - it’s the web. (Of course, my view probably stems from being a native web kid - no one likes the meannies but we’ve gotten used to it.) Wikipedia is better than most of the web because YOU CAN CHANGE IT. And if you inform them that someone is acting in a malicious way, Wikipedians will actually track it to keep it neutral. Can you even imagine Google doing that for every webpage out there? Ha ha ha ha ha. Try getting an article that is libelous removed from the Google index, like a mean-spirited blog entry. Not going to happen (unless you’re Scientology).
Seigenthaler had a very reasonable conversation with Wikipedia, telling them of the troubles. Wikipedia, in Wikipedia-form, acted immediately to remedy the situation, even volunteering to remove the history. I applauded them. And then Seigenthaler wrote a rather mean-spirited, anti-Wikipedia opinion piece in the USA Today. He went around calling for the end to Wikipedia. Uncool. I was outraged.
What pissed me off more was how the academic community pointed to this case and went “See! See! Wikipedia is terrible! We must protest it and stop it! It’s ruining our schools!” All of a sudden, i found myself defending Wikipedia to academics instead of reminding the pro-Wikipedians of its limitations in academia. I kept pointing out that they wouldn’t let students cite from encyclopedias either. I reminded folks that the answer is not to protest it, but to teach students how to read it and to understand its strengths and limitations. To actually TEACH students to interpret web material. I reminded academics that Wikipedia provides information to people who don’t have access to books and that mostly-good information is far better than none. Most importantly, i reminded academics that the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia are super solid and if they had a problem with them, they could fix them. Academics have a lot of knowledge, but all too often they forget that they are teachers and that there is great value in teaching the masses, not just the small number of students who will help their careers progress. Alas, public education has been devalued and information elitism is rampant in an age where we finally have the tools to make knowledge more accessible. Sad. (And one of the many things that is making me disillusioned with academia these days.) I found myself being the Wikipedia promoter because i found the extreme academic viewpoint to be just as egregious as the extreme Wikipedia viewpoint.
And then, as if i couldn’t be more cranky, i watched Internet Researchers take up the same anti-Wikipedia argument. I was floored. These aren’t just academics, they’re the academics who study the web. The academics who should know better. But they felt as though it was a problem that Wikipedia would allow for a man to be defamed. As the conversation progressed, someone pointed out that Wikipedia’s policies and platform supports Seigenthaler’s concern that “irresponsible vandals [can] write anything they want about anybody.” Much to my complete and utter joy, Jimmy Wales responded with a fantastic structural comparison that i felt should be surfaced from the mailing list and shared to the world at large:
Imagine that we are designing a restaurant. This restuarant will serve steak. Because we are going to be serving steak, we will have steak knives for the customers. Because the customers will have steak knives, they might stab each other. Therefore, we conclude, we need to put each table into separate metal cages, to prevent the possibility of people stabbing each other.
What would such an approach do to our civil society? What does it do to human kindness, benevolence, and a positive sense of community?
When we reject this design for restaurants, and then when, inevitably, someone does get stabbed in a restaurant (it does happen), do we write long editorials to the papers complaining that “The steakhouse is inviting it by not only allowing irresponsible vandals to stab anyone they please, but by also providing the weapons”?
No, instead we acknowledge that the verb “to allow” does not apply in such a situation. A restaurant is not allowing something just because they haven’t taken measures to forcibly prevent it a priori. It is surely against the rules of the restaurant, and of course against the laws of society. Just. Like. Libel. If someone starts doing bad things in a restuarant, they are forcibly kicked out and, if it’s particularly bad, the law can be called. Just. Like. Wikipedia.
I do not accept the spin that Wikipedia “allows anyone to write anything” just because we do not metaphysically prevent it by putting authors in cages.
All too often we blame the technology for problematic human behaviors. We fail to recognize that technology makes them more visible but the human behaviors are rooted in larger issues. In turn, we treat the symptoms rather than the disease. The solution is not to bandaid the problems by taking away or limiting the technologies, but to make the world a better place from the inside out.
I am worried about how academics are treating Wikipedia and i think that it comes from a point of naivety. Wikipedia should never be the sole source for information. It will never have the depth of original sources. It will also always contain bias because society is inherently biased, although its efforts towards neutrality are commendable. These are just realizations we must acknowledge and support. But what it does have is a huge repository of information that is the most accessible for most people. Most of the information is more accurate than found in a typical encyclopedia and yet, we value encyclopedias as a initial point of information gathering. It is also more updated, more inclusive and more in-depth. Plus, it’s searchable and in the hands of everyone with digital access (a much larger population than those with encyclopedias in their homes). It also exists in hundreds of languages and is available to populations who can’t even imagine what a library looks like. Yes, it is open. This means that people can contribute what they do know and that others who know something about that area will try to improve it. Over time, articles with a lot of attention begin to be inclusive and approximating neutral. The more people who contribute, the stronger and more valuable the resource. Boycotting Wikipedia doesn’t make it go away, but it doesn’t make it any better either.
I will be truly sad if academics don’t support the project, don’t contribute knowledge. I will be outraged if academics continue to talk about having Wikipedia eliminated as a tool for information dispersal. Sure, students shouldn’t be citing from Wikipedia instead of the primary texts they were supposed to have read. But Wikipedia is a stunning supplement to most texts and often provides pointers to other relevant material that one didn’t know existed. We should be teaching our students how to interpret the materials they get on the web, not banning them from it. We should be correcting inaccuracies that we find rather than protesting the system. We have the knowledge to be able to do this, but all too often, we’re acting like elitist children. In this way, i believe academics are more likely to lose credibility than Wikipedia.
(also posted on apophenia)
1. J-Lon on December 17, 2005 4:41 PM writes...
The issue isn't accuracy per se. It's accountabilty. WP may be on the whole more accurate than a paper encyclopedia. But it's easier to hold an institution or person accountable for an inaccuracy.
Perhaps this idea of accountability is a misguided notion, but I think it undergirds much of our ethical framework. To the extent the WP framework allows for anonymous posts, its structure undermines this check. You can't sue anonymous. And I would expect that if the WP folks have done a decent job drafting their submission policy, they pretty much diclaim liability for anything submitted. So while the community polices accuracy, nobody is ultimately accountable.
It's all well and good to say, "we always take it down if someone complains." But there are instances where you really can't put the genie back in the bottle. The information should never have seen the light of day to begin with, the damage is done, and it probably wouldn't have been published if someone had been legally accountable on the front end.
Perhaps th fluidity of WP is fine and worth the risk, like the steak knives. But I think it is important to consider the broad range of written and unwritten rules that undergird trust and reliance in our society. The possibility of a defamation suit is one of those things. It has deep roots in the Anglo-American legal tradition, and I suspect elsewhere too, because a person's reputation is a very important thing. Certainly, it has always been balanced against First Amendment concerns in this country. And that's a tension that runs through our system.
But I think it's wrong to assume that more of something is always inherently better, and that moreness somehow outweighs all the other issues floating around the information that is made available.
I like the Wikipedia. I've found it useful and I like the interface. The articles on their face often do seem very informative and well done. But at the same time, I'm not sure that the average person understands the limitations.
Perhaps each Wikipedia entry should bear a Prominent legend along these lines:
"WIKIPEDIA IS A PLACE TO START RESEARCH, NOT A PLACE TO FINISH IT. THE WIKIPEDIA COMMUNITY DOES IT'S BEST TO POLICE THE ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION HERE. BUT BECAUSE WIKIPEDIA ALLOWS ANONYMOUS CONTRIBUTORS, NO INDIVIDUAL OR INSTITUTION IS LEGALLY ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE ACCURACY OF THIS INFORMATION. THEREFORE, THIS INFORMATION IS PRESENTED "AS IS," WITH NO WARRANTY TO ITS ACCURACY, AND THE BEST PRACTICE IS TO CHECK WIKIPEDIA ENTRIES AGAINST OTHER MORE EASILY VERIFIABLE SOURCES."
Would this make the WP interface a bit more clunky? Yes. Would it undermine adoption by certain parties? Probably. But it would be a more honest presentation of what's going on there. Certainly, teachers have a duty to try and educate their students about this issue, because this issue is at least implicit in any information that one uses.
But it seems like WP has some duty to assist with it as well, particularly given the unique structure of the WP. Maybe this sort of disclaimer already exists in a link or something. But it would be better if it was attached to every submission and made very clear. That would allow a much more teachable moment for instructors, etc.
Permalink to Comment2. Alex756 on December 17, 2005 6:12 PM writes...
There is a link to a disclaimer on every page in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer
Permalink to Comment3. Anonymous on December 18, 2005 10:06 AM writes...
I think that Wikipedia has made a huge leap forward in shareing information. Anyone who knows about an obscure topic can share his wizdom with the world. If people are worried that the law cannot catch up to Wikipedians who make reputation damageing statements then we need to speed up the networks that fix reputations not worry about information.
Permalink to Comment4. Ben on December 18, 2005 11:36 AM writes...
It isn't as bad as it seems.
I'm an undergraduate at a research-driven university. In three separate courses over the last three semesters, the class has been asked to read and update a wikipedia page as a homework assignment. Academic support of wikipedia is growing.
Remember, it took a very long time to get professors to do that whole email thing. Good ideas are hard to resist.
Permalink to Comment5. Ben Hyde on December 18, 2005 12:09 PM writes...
It is very difficult to have a constructive conversation about this topic between those who would quickly dismiss it for failing their tests of quality and those who are deeply enthusiastic for the qualities it does have. So, nice posting.
I find the restaurant metaphor delightful, but it suffers I think from a sense of scale.
There is a story that's analogous that I tell about Microsoft Windows/DOS. Microsoft was quite conscious that open APIs and low barriers between subsystems enabled their developers to lots of very cool things. The result was a system with very poor security. The fertile ground for developers turned into a fertile platform for bad actors.
So I like to say that Microsoft spread a thick layer of tinder (or gasoline) across the periphery of the Internet and then acted innocent when some bad actors dropped a match into the tinder. We all got burnt. The question arises who is at fault?
The powerful, and Wikipedia is now very powerful, often discount their responsibility for the harm done by others on their platforms. But, as they say, with power comes responsibly.
The qualities that Wikipedia excels at may undermine the qualities that might reduce the probability that it does harm to innocent citizens. Finding the right balance is necessary work.
One of the facts of life about social systems is that they demonstrate a surprising degree of rigidity about what qualities they emphasis.
Permalink to Comment6. Taran on December 18, 2005 12:25 PM writes...
Applause. Period.
Permalink to Comment7. Anonymoose on December 18, 2005 2:35 PM writes...
I love wikipedia, even when it's wrong.
Check out this joint wikipedia/google search thingy
Permalink to CommentI made for a home page.
8. sujal on December 18, 2005 5:33 PM writes...
I'm poking around for these, but if you happen to have the links handy for the Internet Researchers bit and the USA today article, I'd appreciate it if you could add them to the post. :-)
Permalink to Comment9. j-lon on December 19, 2005 5:42 PM writes...
A link to a disclaimer, and an all caps disclaimer at the start of each article are not the same thing. A very small percentage of users click on disclaimer links, terms of service, etc. That's why they are put in links, so the provider can claim to have a disclaimer but simultaneously bury it. The disclaimer link on a WP article page is in 8 or 9 point type below the fold at the extreme bottom of the page. It would shock me if even 10% of the people using the WP ever read this.
If there was a real commitment to being honest about the limitations of the WP, some sort of blended disclaimer/link would be better (e.g., The language I suggested above at the start of every article, along with a link at the end of that language to longer disclaimer you pointed me to).
Permalink to Comment10. Ta bu shi da yu on December 19, 2005 8:44 PM writes...
You see, I see a big disconnect between what J-Lon has written and what he is DOING. Have a look at the way I just posted a comment on this article: do you know who I am? Can you track me down easily? How do you know I'm not just impersonating Wikipedia administrator Ta bu shi da yu?
J-Lon wrote:
"Perhaps this idea of accountability is a misguided notion, but I think it undergirds much of our ethical framework. To the extent the WP framework allows for anonymous posts, its structure undermines this check. You can't sue anonymous. And I would expect that if the WP folks have done a decent job drafting their submission policy, they pretty much diclaim liability for anything submitted. So while the community polices accuracy, nobody is ultimately accountable."
Fair enough. However, there is no accountability of ANY of the comments made on this page. Should we now be reforming Corante?
Ta bu shi da yu
Permalink to CommentWikipedia administrator
11. Jon Garfunkel on December 20, 2005 2:52 AM writes...
Well, steak knives are alright as long as the lights are on in the restaurant. Now turn the lights off. For good measure, imagine that not your local Cheesecake Factory but Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca. That's the added burden of dealing with a sometimes-anonymous community.
I also wonder if a online 'pedia would have turned out quite differently if it were comprised solely of hyperlinks to other sources. That structure would ultimately be much more difficult to abuse.
Permalink to Comment12. Itub on December 21, 2005 11:26 AM writes...
"A link to a disclaimer, and an all caps disclaimer at the start of each article are not the same thing."
No, they are not, but if people lack the common sense to question what they read, that's their problem. Let's not dumb everything down to the level of the instant soup container that has a warning label like this: "WARNING: CONTENTS MAY BE HOT AFTER HEATING!"
Permalink to Comment13. Stanley Krute on December 23, 2005 4:19 PM writes...
Academics offer a very high-priced commodity.
The 'net is disintermediating that, as it
does in other realms. Wikipedia's just a
scapegoat for their unease.
-- stan
Permalink to Comment14. Seth Finkelstein on December 23, 2005 4:57 PM writes...
I think this reply put it best:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2005/12/16
"Reponses to criticism of Wikipedia go something like this: the first is usually a paean to that pure democracy which is the project's noble fundament. If I don't like it, why don't I go edit it myself? To which I reply: because I don't have time to babysit the Internet. Hardly anyone does. If they do, it isn't exactly a compliment."
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Permalink to Comment16. Bob on March 4, 2006 9:53 PM writes...
Please check out
http://www.namebase.org/
Nose around and find out what happened anong the owner, Wikipedia and Siegenthaler. His opinions on google are worth a read too. He blocks crawlers and then complains about his lousy ranking. *sigh* I use it anyway.
Looking above this little text box I'm typing in at the Elizabeth Weise article about Google in USAToday. If you don't understand the way Google works, don't for God's sake comment on it! I'll bet she doesn't even know she sees only ten percent of the Internet's content. I sure wouldn't call Google MY brain.
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The fact that a discussion of wikipedia is almost immediately overrun by comment spam does point up something profound about the internet. The first thing you have to ask about any wikipedia entry is "does anyone have a motive for lying about this?" and the second one is "Does anyone who knows about this subject have a motive and opportunity to write this article?" Those two filters between them will eliminate about two thirds of the entries straight away. On the other hand, the stuff that has just been lifted from the 1911 Brittanica is interesting.
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Permalink to Comment33. stef47 on August 28, 2007 9:55 PM writes...
I recently made some comments on wikipedia and next time I vistited the site ,found that I was bannend.I was accused of deleting pages,amoungst other things ,which I would never-ever do..I would argue and debate instead..What I did complain about was the dis-information on the site and the fact that the cia are big contributors..One example would be the fire at the german parliment.Histrory has recorded in fine detail how the nazi party did this,yet reading the wikipedia entry one would think it was a lone communist nut that did the deed.How many other prime bits of dis-information are mixed in with mostly sound information?Why does wikipedia allow a government agency to contribute?Why is a whistle blowing citizen banend?..Since the internet1 is the last place for information to be freely exchanged in a democratic way, I fully anticipate a government attempt to close it down.Their unjust policys and totalaterinist direction demand they have full controll of information..Internet 2 will be the groundwork for this.Once in place they will cause an "incident",blame it on internet1 and close it down..People,the good people will fight it,but the human heart has too much corruption and its our destiny.It was nice knowing you.stef.
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