| Defense and Illustration of Wikipedia (2006) | |||||||||||||||
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| This note, more precisely Part One, was prepared in late December of 2005 as a reaction to a critique of Wikipedia by four well-known computer scientists. Their article highlights, Cassandra-style, all that can go wrong with the Wikipedia concept of an encyclopedia produced by an iterative “community process ” allowing anyone to edit any entry. A scary prospect indeed. As my response acknowledges, it’s hard to find fault with their cogently argued indictment — except for one detail: in its eagerness to paint a theoretical picture of Wikipedia as a disaster waiting to happen, it skipped checking the real Wikipedia, which would have revealed that the disaster has not happened, A more pragmatic look at Wikipedia as it exists today indicates that the project, while perhaps not living up to the hype of its most fervent promoters, has become a superbly useful tool for Web-based fact-finding. The original critique suffered, in my opinion, from a halfempty-glass perspective, and from a misunderstanding of Wikipedia’s role in the world. Without in the end disagreeing fundamentally with the authors ’ analysis, I take a half-full-glass view, based on a different understanding of what is Wikipedia’s competition: not the traditional professionally produced encyclopedias, but the legions of sites that, springing up all over the Web, purport to contain answers, unverified and often unverifiable, to every topic on earth. Against that standard, Wikipedia is a resounding success. That’s the analysis I produced in December, based on an assessment of what Wikipedia is, not what it could degrade into. You will find it in Part One. Because of other commitments I had to put aside finishing it up; but a rather personal Wikipedia incident in early January, recounted in the second part, gives enough reason to get back to it, and an interesting twist to the first. | |||||||||||||||
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