Let's talk about Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an open-source free encyclopaedia, which relies on the participation (in the practical form of writing and editing information) of its users to keep it up-to-date and relevant. Although it is easy to identify the flaws of such an online service (some of which I will discuss in detail in future posts), I think it is also pertinent to assess the value of Web 2.0 services like Wikipedia in relation to the potential of achieving a truthful global record of historical and social events. However, in order to address this topic it is pertinent to discuss several of the issues and theories surrounding a service such as Wikipedia.

The predominant questions that arises when addressing issues centred around Web 2.0, and Wikipedia in particular, focus on access, equality and education as well as the notion of collective intelligence. Services such as Wikipedia rely on user interaction and participation to fill its database. Users are encouraged to write about what they know, and edit previous articles in a bid to build a database of information: “the sum of all human knowledge”. Not surprisingly, one issue for the general populous accepting this kind of ‘information evolution’ is authority – who has the authority on that information and where did they get the authority (or authoritative information) from? After all, as Martijn de Waal points out, “[e]very link from a blog to an article in a newspaper raises that paper’s ‘page ranking’ in Google and thus its visibility and potential authority”. This unintentional voting system works against the valid “systems of collaborative intelligence” which predisposes that all users will “work together on the basis of equality to create meaning and compile knowledge”.

According to Stephen Lax (2007), user-inequality is a key flaw for the egalitarian ideals of the internet and Web 2.0 as expressed by Charles Leadbetter (We-Think) and de Waal. Aside from access issues, dubbed ‘the digital divide’ (as in not everyone has access to the internet, and the system privileges those who do and rewards them for it), Lax maintains that new information and communications technologies (ICTs) are not the answer to bring about a more equal society. Instead, the Internet merely reflects the general material inequalities which currently separate the rich from the poor, the fed from the starving and the privileged from the underprivileged.

However, Pierre Levy (2001) disagrees with Lax when he argues that, likewise with the television then the film industry, that the potential for the internet to exclude some and include others is not as big a problem as other deem it to be. Not everyone has access to a telephone and corporations make massive profits off the communications industry (and regulate it) but that certainly does not make the case against them, is Levy’s argument. He goes further to point out that it is “not the poor who are “against the Internet, but those whose power, privilege (especially cultural), and monopoly are threatened by the emergence of new configurations of the communications infrastructure”. Here Levy is hinting at the power structures which are in place and prove more of a threat to equality than the existence of new communications technologies.

Critics and sceptics of Wikipedia also cite vandalism as a concerning factor as to the reliability of the information on the website – how can users tell that the information they seek has not been written by a vandal trying to misinform? Users assume, and granted are sometimes right, that people will abuse the system through vandalism. However, this I liken to a school goer defacing an encyclopaedia in the library. At first it is gratifying and fun to write vile words and draw crude pictures on the pages but eventually it becomes boring because the environment they are in (the library) always maintains the same purpose and the librarians diligently erases all the vandalism as it occurs. It becomes tiresome to continually vandalise something where other people have a vested interest in returning it to its original (or improved) state. With Wikipedia, the hope then is that eventually the vandals will become bored and move on to another forum for (or form of) expression. Charles Leadbetter, the father of We-Think theory, has faith in this eventually happening, in believing that, given time, “a collective consensus will emerge”.

Beyond vandalism, access and equality, huge concerns still exist around the quality of the information (see Lax: 2007) as a result of the contributions not being written by those in authoritative positions (a graduated historian writing about history, for example). Martijn de Waal discussed these concerns through looking at the current shift from the expert paradigm (“in which experts accredited by official bodies determine what is true and what is not”) towards a more meritocratic system (where what counts is proven expertise rather than institutional embeddedness”). De Waal claims that “the position of traditional experts is being undermined by ‘collaborative intelligence’ systems such as Wikipedia in which media users cooperate in an egalitarian manner”. Through the demise of the expert paradigm, according to de Waal, we can expect to see “a new balance” gradually emerging; in other words, “new collective forms of canonisation” . Furthermore, Leadbetter states that “as people become dependant on the expert knowledge of professionals they loose faith in their own capacity to act”, highlighting the importance of ongoing social engagement in relevant discussions through platforms such as Wikipedia.

This is a complex topic and through this blog I hope to explore it as fully as I can. One important aspect of my discussion here is reader participation, so, if you have any thoughts on the topics covered here I would like to hear it: you have a voice, use it!