I've been doing some work with Wikipedia for my job, as well as reading some things about it in other places like blogs and Wired.
Now, it's my turn to say how I feel about Wikipedia. It bugs me.
There are a couple of things about the site that are noble aspirations but that in practice are less than desirable. The foremost of those being the mob-mentality. While the wiki model might be useful for focused groups who can all knowledgably contribute to one topic and build on each others work, opening that same model up to anyone with a Web browser doesn't accomplish the same thing.
I'm not saying that all (and maybe not even most) of the information on Wikipedia is wrong. I'm just saying that the community that is ensuring the accuracy of the articles may not be well-enough informed to do so. Fundamentally, Wikipedia relies on a small group of people who do actually have an in-depth knowledge of the subject to ensure it's correct. But, they allow anyone to make the inital postings and make changes. So, even if a small group of experts is actively working to keep an article, or articles, correct they are competing againt the combined "wisdom" of the unwashed masses.
Secondly, Wikipedia is not really as open as they like to claim. With the rise of wiki-wars and commercialization, Wikipedia now has an extensive group of moderators that can (again, with little actual knowledge about a topic) halt discussion, delete pages, or lock articles from being edited. This removes the concept of "all the world's knowledge" by once again creating a layer of gatekeepers that decide what knowledge is permissable to be distributed.
I think the line that is most blurry in Wikipedia is the commercial line. Where does an article stop being informational and start being advertorial? And, along those same lines, when does information about a company, it's products, it's services, it's history, etc., stop being part of the collected human knowledge?
I can understand that a sales pitch from a company is not necessarily an important thing to preserve. But why not the rest of it? Why not even for a small company?
If the topic were non-commerical, how large an audience does Wikipedia require before it's considered worthy to be entombed in their annals? (Notice the gatekeeper language I'm using for effect).
Since I doubt that I'll ever be able to make a dent in Wikipedia, and since I can see it barrelling along crushing any knowledge that gets in its way, I'll close this little rant.
I use Wikipedia to introduce myself to topics. But, the Internet is full of resources that are more reliable and credible. I hope that all of you Internet researchers out there are taking the time to move beyond the wiki articles and find those sources.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
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