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Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Wikivangelism
Sunshine asks:The parallels between The Hitchhiker's Guide (as found in Adams' original BBC radio series and novels) and Wikipedia are so striking, it's a wonder that the author's rabid fans don't think he invented time travel. Since its editor was perennially out to lunch, the Guide was amended "by any passing stranger who happened to wander into the empty offices on an afternoon and saw something worth doing." This anonymous group effort ends up outselling Encyclopedia Galactica even though "it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate." ...
Don't expect Wikipedia to change your life, though, unless you've secretly longed to be an encyclopedia editor. Just because you give everyone read and write permissions doesn't mean everyone will use them. Wiki lovers argue that they are collaborative, self-correcting, living documents that evolve to hold the sum of all the knowledge of their users. But, like blogging, editing the Net's encyclopedia appeals to a small, enthusiastic demographic.
But excessive nerdiness isn't what's keeping Wikipedia from becoming the Net's killer resource. Accuracy is. In a Wired feature story, Daniel Pink (kind of) praised the hulking encyclopedia by saying you can "[l]ook up any topic you know something about and you'll probably find that the Wikipedia entry is, if not perfect, not bad." But don't people use encyclopedias to look up stuff they don't know anything about? Even if a reference tool is 98 percent right, it's not useful if you don't know which 2 percent is wrong. The entry for Slate, for instance, claims that several freelance writers are "columnists on staff" and still lists Cyrus Krohn as publisher months after the Washington Post Co.'s Cliff Sloan took over.
Wikipedia won't change my life? What encyclopedia will? If Google changed my life, Wiki has, as well. If I need information, but don't know what something is called, I Google it. If I know what it's called, I Wiki it. I wouldn't say my life has been changed, but I certainly behave differently. Either it's a ridiculous standard to ask any web site to meet or its a standard that the Wikipedia has easily met.
The last paragraph is more troubling. First, the Slate writer misreads the Wired article. That's not a good sign. The Wired article is pointing out that you look up something you know about, you'll find that the Wikipedia article is pretty good. It's a way to test the accuracy of the Wikipedia. Looking up something you know nothing about doesn't help you understand whether what you're reading is true.
Second, we've got another false standard. If a reference tool is 98% accurate and 2% inaccurate, the author tells us the tool is not useful. To highlight how egregiously wrong the Wikipedia is, the author looks up something he knows about (the very practice mentioned in Wired which the author just criticized) and finds two troubling errors. One, that freelance writers are identified as "columnists on staff". That's the kind of error that shouldn't be made, but only because the information isn't important enough to include. A generic term like "contributors" or "writers" would suffice. Second, that the Wikipedia hasn't been updated to include the name of the new publisher. This is ridiculous. The Encyclopedia Britannica isn't updated monthly. I'll bet the 2001 edition didn't include a single reference to the September 11 attacks, or any significant event that happened after it was published. No one thinks a print book is useless because facts change after the presses run.
The author is correct in finding similarities between the Hitchhiker's Guide and the Wikipedia. But the author charges that the Wikipedia is as wildly inaccurate as the fictional Guide. The Wikipedia, though it has many failings, is largely accurate and highly useful. I don't think I deserve to be denigrated as a Wikivangelist for understanding its value.
5 Comments:
I just read the Slate article and didn't find it to be as negative as I expected. In fact I think it was generally positive with a few complaints. (Which is actually how I tend to go thru life myself now that I think about it.) I am not a Wikivangelist but I do like it and find myself using it quite a bit. It's one of those "not perfect but good enough" type of things that is invaluable if you can use it in the right context.
By 
, at
12:30 PM
No, it's not the worst article in the world, but I do think the article fails to measure what the Wikipedia is by focusing on what it is not.
So you're saying it is not perfect AND not good enough. I can live with that. The author may have just mistakenly assumed that his readers likely already had a pretty good idea of what it was.
By , at
1:02 PM
It's not perfect, but it's very good at what it does. For example, the Simpsons page is far superior to anything you'll ever find in a traditional encyclopedia. Is it as important as the political history of Myanmar? Probably not, but I'm sure you could find experts who would pick that history apart, as well.
By the way, in saying it's not perfect AND not very good I was referring to the Slate article, not Wikipedia which I think is really pretty good.
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