The Charms and Troubles of Wikipeda
By Nicole Demby | November 15, 2009 at 3:20 pmIn Edit This Page, Evgeny Morozov recounts the history and evolution of Wikipedia as discussed by Andrew Lih in his book, “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia”. With compliments to Lih’s book, Morozov offers an insightful explanation of Wikipedia’s transition from the unfettered democracy of its early days to its current to a much more bureaucratic form, an inevitable transition, Morozov suggests, as the site grew and attracted a larger more diverse set of editors (not to mention many “vandals”). Yet he goes on to criticize Lih for failing to give a comprehensive philosophical explanation of why Wikipedia works. He then criticizes the site itself for an administrative structure that forces “subject experts . . . to engage in pointless intellectual debates with Wikipedia’s bureaucratic guardians, many of whom are persuaded only by hyperlinks, not cogent arguments.”
Morozov’s admonishment of Lih’s philosophical failings may be only a foil for his own failure to grasp the unique nature of Wikipedia. In his article The Charms of Wikipedia published in the New York Review of Books, Nicholson Baker captures the idiosyncrasies of Wikipedia and describes how it is precisely these idiosyncrasies that make the site such a dynamic and vital resource. Proving that one man’s flaws are another man’s charms, Baker explains that on Wikipedia “any inelegance, or typo, or relic of vandalism reminds you that this gigantic encyclopedia isn’t a commercial product.” This is not to say that Wikipedia’s founders did not aim to create an accurate source, they did. And while the information on Wikipedia is far from perfect, it is not so far from perfect to justify critics’ complaints (in her article on Wikipedia in the New Yorker, Stacy Schiff cites a Nature survey that found that Wikipedia had four errors for every three of Encyclopedia Britannica’s). Yet to focus too heavily on the question of Wikipedia’s accuracy distracts from the real beauty of Wikipedia, its cultural import. While Morozov may bemoan the insufficiency of the entry on nouvelle vague-director Claude Chabrol compared to that ofTransformers-director Michael Bay, he can’t deny the fact that most people in this country would probably rather watch a film starring Megan fox than Jean-Paul Belmondo. Yet with 13 million articles, Wikipedia is also a repository for people’s diverse and obscure interests. The cite could never be as extensive or as relevant as it is if it were bound to the same restrictive methodologies as more traditional encyclopedias. By preferencing online sources rather than library tomes, Wikipedia both reflects and perpetuates the fact the internet has spawned a generative, fundamentally populist form of knowledge-creation, one that is presently our greatest epistemological tool. To lament this fact as Morozov does is to be sorely out of touch with the contemporary society that Wikipedia reflects with both its methodology and its flaws.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Andrew Lih, Boston Review, Open Source, Wikipedia | 6 Comments »
Ni Nicole – thanks for your review. I think you are being a little bit unfair to what I had to say: 1) I didn’t really touch upon the question of accuracy in that review at all 2) I never suggested that Wikipedia should be subject to the same “restrictive methodologies as more traditional encyclopedias” 3) If Wikipedia defined its mission as being the greatest repository of people’s diverse and obscure interests, I would not be offering any criticism at all. However, they want to be taken seriously as the world’s most reputable source of knowledge. I am fine with extensive entries on the Transformers as the next guy, but in order to fulfill their mission they may need to, well, make a few changes. Please note that it doesn’t necessarily mean purging the site of trivia – it means finding new ways of producing knowledge in areas that are not yet well-covered on the site – or redefining their mission if this fails.
Finally, to say that I “lament” the advent of Wikipedia is misleading – I actually call it one of the greatest social experiments in that essay. The reason why I criticize Andrew Lih’s book is precisely for not telling us WHAT makes it work so well so that its lessons can be applied elsewhere (and no, it doesn’t mean that it’s perfect – hence my criticism of its current approach to knowledge creation).
Thanks so much for your reply Evgeny. While I understand your point, what I was trying to say (which perhaps I should have said more clearly) is that perhaps the site achieves something more interesting and relevant than their own stated mission by manifesting the epistemological relativity and reflexivity of internet knowledge. If Wikipedia wants to attract more tenured university professors and fewer uncredentialed common folk as editors, they should make systemic changes to the site as you suggest. Yet we must consider that something of the “wisdom of the crowds” approach might be lost in the process (I’d hedge a bet that your “subject experts” tend to be no less male and white than the current editor pool).
more from evgeny on wikipedia:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/opinion/28iht-edmorozov.html?_r=1
This is the main reason I read brfootnote.theclawmagazine.com. Insightful post.
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Im not wthory to be in the same forum. ROTFL