28b4 Jabberwiki: The Educational Response, Part II -Britannica Blog

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Another feature of the response of educational institutions to the digital tsunami is the collective pretence that the established criteria of learning—notably literacy and intelligence—are dilutable.  True literacy—the ability to interact with complex texts and the ability to express complex ideas in clear prose—is being equated with ill-defined concepts such as “visual literacy,” “computer literacy,” and “21st-century literacies” as if they could make up for illiteracy and a-literacy.  Some have proposed that playing video games is an activity on the same plane as reading texts and equally beneficial to mental growth.  These attempts to downplay the central part literacy plays in the life of the mind are malign attempts to come to grips with the changes being wrought by the digital revolution through abandoning the fundamental values of learning that have obtained in Western societies since classical Greece.  

The same goes for the theories of different “intelligences.” Intelligence is the ability to think quickly and logically, to absorb new ideas and to incorporate them into existing knowledge, to express ideas clearly in speech and writing—in short, to learn and grow in understanding.  Intelligence, an essential component of success in the educational process, is partly a gift and partly the result of work and training.  There is no substitute for it academically, and it is very important that it be nurtured, encouraged, and rewarded.

Perhaps these are elitist ideas?  So be it.  Learning and education are enterprises in which the academically gifted prosper and are justified in prospering.  That prospering benefits the individual, but it also benefits society.  A leveling academy that rewards semi-literacy and tolerates ignorance is, by definition, dysfunctional.  We should be seeking to reward the intellectually gifted, not least because societal progress depends on their intelligence, understanding, and wisdom.

One interesting and curious manifestation of the leveling response to the digital revolution is the digital open-source collective Wikipedia.  Here is part of its entry dealing with itself (or at least this is how the entry read during the moment I read it):

Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers; its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia… Wikipedia has approximately seven million articles in 251 languages, 1.7 million of which are in the English edition.

The crucial words here are “its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the encyclopedia.”  Let us leave aside whether such a thing can reasonably define itself as an encyclopedia in direct line of descent from the great French encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert and also the curious conflation of writing and editing (its sections are written as well as edited by anyone with access) and concentrate on the central proposition that one can gain useful knowledge from texts written by any Tom, Dick, or Sally with time on his or her hands.  Do we entrust the education of children to self-selected “experts” without any known authority or credentials? Would any sane person pay fees to take university courses that are taught by people who may or may not be qualified to teach such a course?  Just this March, in fact, we learned that the high-ranking administrator and paid employee of Wikipedia named “Essjay,” who adjudicated its content disputes on religion and claimed to be a professor of theology with four degrees, turned out to be a 24-year-old without any advanced degree; he had never taught a day in his life.  Even for people who buy the trendy idea that teaching is passé and believe in “learning together,” it would surely be cheaper and more relaxing to discuss topics of interest with people encountered randomly in pubs. 

The central idea behind Wikipedia is that it is an important part of an emerging mass movement aimed at the “democratization of knowledge”—an egalitarian cyberworld in which all voices are heard and all opinions are welcomed.  In the words of Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s co-founders: “Wikipedia allows everyone equal authority in stating what is known about any given topic. Their new politics of knowledge is deeply, passionately egalitarian.”

Wait a minute!  The aggregation of the opinions of the informed and the uninformed (ranging from the ignorant to the crazy) is decidedly and emphatically not “what is known about any given topic.”  It is a mixture of the known (emanating from the knowledgeable and the expert) and erroneous or partial information (emanating from the uniformed and the inexpert). 

The problem is that it is impossible to tell from any entry in the Wikipedia database which parts are wheat and which are chaff, since the authors and editors of that entry are unknown.  For example, the entry for Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency was “last modified” 20 minutes before my writing of this essay.  The reader is completely ignorant of who wrote the original article, by whom it was modified, and for which reasons.  The reader of the article on Mme. Royal is invited to edit it after logging on to ensure anonymity but warned that his or her work might be subject to “merciless editing.”  It was this “merciless editing” that exasperated Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Braid, when asked recently about his entry in Wikipedia.  “The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me,” he told The New York Times.  When asked why he did not correct the errors, he shrugged off the suggestion: “The next day someone will fix it back.”  Of course, Wikipedia’s credo is that the inaccurate and crazed will be discovered and corrected or eliminated by the swarm of volunteers.  Yet, the scurrilous and utterly unfounded accusation in Wikipedia that retired journalist and editor John Seigenthaler, Sr., was involved in the abssassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, lasted for more than four months in Wikipedia’s biography of him and even longer on mirror sites cross-publishing Wikipedia’s biography. 

So, in essence, we are asked to believe two things—first that an authoritative work can be the result of the aggregation of the opinions of self selected anonymous “experts” with or without credentials and, second, that the collective wisdom of the cyberswarm will correct errors and ensure authority. These beliefs demand an unprecedented level of credulity, and even Larry Sanger (in an online article on Edge) is balking:

As it turns out, our many Web 2.0 revolutionaries have been so thoroughly seized with the successes of strong collaboration that they are resistant to recognizing some hard truths.  As wonderful as it might be that the hegemony of professionals over knowledge is lessening, there is a downside: our grasp of and respect for reliable information suffers.  With the rejection of professionalism has come a widespread rejection of expertise—of the proper role in society of people who make it their life’s work to know stuff.  This, I maintain, is not a positive development; but it is also not a necessary one.

Sanger’s recognition of the role of “people who make it their life’s work to know stuff” in creating authoritative sources has led him to found ”Citizendium”—an online resource that is created by experts—because:

I support meritocracy: I think experts deserve a prominent voice in declaring what is known, because knowledge is their life.  As fallible as they are, experts, as society has traditionally identified them, are more likely to be correct than non-experts, particularly when a large majority of independent experts about an issue are in broad agreement about it.  In saying this, I am merely giving voice to an assumption that underlies many of our institutions and practices.  Experts know particular topics particularly well.  By paying closer attention to experts, we improve our chances of getting the truth [my emphasis]; by ignoring them, we throw our chances to the wind.  Thus, if we reduce experts to the level of the rest of us, even when they speak about their areas of knowledge, we reduce society’s collective grasp of the truth.

Despite Sanger’s apostasy from the central tenet of the Wikipedia faith and his establishment of a resource based on expertise, the remaining faithful continue to add to, and the intellectually lazy to use, the fundamentally flawed resource, much to the chagrin of many professors and schoolteachers.  Many professors have forbidden its use in papers. Even most of the terminally trendy plead with their students to use other resources.  

A few endorse Wikipedia heartily. This mystifies me. Education is not a matter of popularity or of convenience—it is a matter of learning, of knowledge gained the hard way, and of respect for the human record.  A professor who encourages the use of Wikipedia is the intellectual equivalent of a dietician who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything.

The central lesson of our current response to the changes that digitization has wrought and is wreaking should be that it is not only possible but also good to respond with changes in the ways in which we do things as long as those changes are firmly rooted in an intellectual meritocracy.  In turn, that meritocracy must be based on respect for expertise and learning, respect for individual achievement, respect for true research, respect for structures that confer authority and credentials, and respect for the authenticity of the human record.

2d4f



54 Responses to “Jabberwiki: The Educational Response, Part II”

  1. Seth Finkelstein Says:

  2. Nathan T. Says:

    What a wonderful point Seth makes (which also means he’s sharing some of Michael Gorman’s concerns). I hadn’t thought about Wikipedia this way before, but he’s right - there is a rather cultish ring to all this.

    A charismatic leader, acolytes slaving away for free, acolytes who will even lie (see the “Essjay” case Seth and Gorman are talking about) for the “good of the order,” a rabid defense of their work and their leader’s creation (just see the initial replies in this forum), and even the creation of new words (”Wiki” this, “Wiki” that) and even a new dating of time (some of the more extreme Wiki followers will even measure time from the start of their “conversion”–check out some of their bios) — all of this does have a rather cultish feel about it. And zealousness can breed the very shananigans Finkelstein and Gorman are talking about, shenanigans that are virtually impossible to monitor let alone control because of the lack of accountability built into this open, anonymous publishing paradigm.

    Yes (in anticipation of the Wiki letters to come), this does not mean all Wiki administrators (let alone users of Wikipedia; I’ve used it myself) are delusional, cultish followers. But, nonetheless, the similarities are striking and might explain the zeal with which its creators champion not their product but “the cause.” Seth is on to something here.

  3. Daniel M Says:

    Unlike Britannica, Wikipedia’s credentials don’t come from its editors. The credentials come from references and sources cited at the end of each article. Yes, there are some articles don’t cite any references, but most of them do.

    You’re completely wrong when you say “we are asked to believe two things—first that an authoritative work can be the result…”. Wikipedia doesn’t claim to be authoritative — it explicitly asks readers not to cite it as a source, and it asks users to verify information through references cited in the article.

    The problem with Wikipedia critics is that they often perceive an imaginary war between Wikipedia and traditional encyclopedias. They assume that Wikipedia is out to destroy all traditional resources of knowledge, which is not true. Wikipedia is an addition to existing resources of knowledge, not a replacement.

    An analogy: consider the popular site Digg, where users submit news stories. Digg doesn’t aim to replace The New York Times or BBC, which are run by professional journalists and editors. It just aims to present the information from these sites in a more user-friendly way. In fact, Digg is dependent on these news sites for its stories, and drives traffic to these websites. Wikipedia is like Digg, and expert-written sources are like news sites. Wikipedia collects content from these sources, presents them in a more friendly way, cites these experts and thus “drives traffic” to these expert sources.

    The major issue is that some readers don’t know how to use Wikipedia properly. Eg. a lot of teenagers end up citing it in their academic write-ups. The solution is not abandonment of the Wikipedia model — the solution is to educate people (esp. students) about how to use such resources properly.

    Wikipedians don’t force people to read the articles. People read and appreciate Wikipedia, because they find it useful. Wikipedia has been able to run for so many years without advertisements, because of the donations received from appreciative readers. I’ve great respect for traditional resources of knowledge, such as Encyclopædia Britannica, but the fact remains that the Wikipedia model has its own advantages over the traditional models.

    A look at some of the featured articles on Wikipedia gives an insight into the success of the Wikipedia model. Several non-featured articles are also well-referenced and of considerably good quality. You’re being either ignorant or dishonest, when you use words like “intellectually lazy” and “fundamentally flawed” to describe Wikipedia and its readers.

    I also disagree with you when you say “A professor who encourages the use of Wikipedia is the intellectual equivalent of a dietician who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything.” It’s true that Wikipedia is not allowed as a citation or source for academic papers, but there a large number of professors encourage use of Wikipedia as a place to gain background knowledge about a topic. And they do so because Wikipedia surpasses traditional resources of knowledge in several areas. Wikipedia articles are more up-to-date, often offer wider coverage and several of the articles cover topics that the traditional encyclopedias fail to cover — this is especially true with non-British/non-American topics.

    Respect for individual achievement and true research doesn’t mean one has to be against projects like Wikipedia which aim to create a repository of human knowledge in a unique way. Wikipedia is not against respect for expertise and learning; in fact, it is dependent on sources authored by experts. A large number of Wikipedia artilces source their content from (and cite) respected experts and scholars.

    Possibly, less than one-fourth of the Wikipedia editors are experts, but that doesn’t mean that Wikipedia is replacing experts — Wikipedia just aims to present knowledge sourced from experts in a better, comprehensive way. People should ideally check Wikipedia when they’re looking for quick knowledge about a topic, and they should go through scholarly journals and books if they wish to do some serious research.

    Expert-written content forms a primary source, while sources like Wikipedia are an aggregation of knowledge, collected from these primary sources. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages. Comparing the two is perceiving an imaginary war between the two and an injustice to both.

    1f42
  4. Blog reading « Only Crook in Town Says:

    […] Would you continue reading a post that started that way?  I tried.  I skimmed it to find out that Michael Gorman was largely talking about Wikipedia.  Since he started his second post by apparently assuming that I read his first post on the subject, I could take the time to find that first post.  But the reality is this:  I am an information junkie, but when I have to work so hard to even understand the first sentence of a blog posting, I find myself trotting along to other blogs which don’t require that much effort.  After all, at this moment, I have 120 updated Bloglines feeds to look at.  […]

  5. Willow Says:

    Dear Dr. Gorman,

    Being fond of the classics myself, I appreciate your advocacy of traditional scholarship, but I believe that your arguments against Wikipedia are misplaced. To be sure, there are many risible articles and editors there, but there is much to be admired as well. We would all do well to learn from its strengths as well as its foibles. Rather than seeking to tear Wikipedia down, the Britannica and others should perhaps consider creative ways to exploit its strengths and even to ally with it in socially productive ways. As an example, the scientists at Rfam have begun to use Wikipedia for scientific outreach; in collaboration with Wikipedians, they have created and are expanding 574 Wikipedia articles that explain the properties of every major family of RNA found thus far in nature.

    You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that Wikipedians do not respect scholarly authority. That is incorrect. However, rather than succumbing to the ad verecundiam fallacy of personal authority, we appeal instead to the consensus of published scholarly references, which represent the gold standard of authority in scholarly work. Thus, Wikipedia articles seek to resemble scientific review articles rather than Britannica articles, which largely do not reference their assertions. Many readers of Wikipedia appreciate its lists of references. Admittedly, not every Wikipedia article has risen to the challenge of referencing its assertions reliably, but you will find many that have, and indeed many articles on traditional scholarly topics that, I daresay, are superior to their Britannica counterparts by every scholarly criterion.

    The following example illustrates the nature of authority at Wikipedia. As you have been writing your poluphloisboisterous essays (I love Homer!), I have been writing a Wikipedia article, “Kepler problem in general relativity”, that explains two of the key predictions used to support Einstein’s theory of general relativity. I do not claim to be a physicist, but I have supported my article with references to established textbooks and literature. The article is still in its infancy, being only a few weeks old, but I have high hopes that it will improve still further, as I add layperson-friendly explanations, more Figures, information about its history and its present relevance, more references, etc. (I apologize if its contents are unintelligible; they’re intended for elite scholars who understand calculus. ;) The authority of my article flows from its logical train of thought and the referencing of its postulates and conclusions, not because a lone professor somewhere “says so”. As its predecessors such as “Equipartition theorem” were, this article will be translated into many other languages and I cherish the hope that it will benefit many befuddled physics students around the globe, who may not have access to good textbooks.

    I do not believe that the rise of Wikipedia will alter the way that traditional scholarship is done or diminish its quality. Rigorous peer review will continue to be applied to scientific articles before they’re published and to grant applications before they’re funded, no? Logic and the demand for hard evidence will not go away; rather, what is changing is the access of non-scholars to the fruits of scholarship.

    Much has been made in the Web 2.0 forum of the virtues of wisdom versus information. Yet I find it surprising that no one has referenced any of the classic texts on this subject. As one trivial example, consider Seneca’s De brevitate vitae, which argues that we should use our short lives to do what is important. Many of us at Wikipedia, and I daresay many of you at the Britannica, feel that collating and sharing the collected treasures of human civilization is a worthy way of spend our lives, a gracious and selfless pursuit that ennobles us all. We are natural allies, and I appeal to all of you for peace between us; for a wise person does not seek unnecessary conflict and strife, and much good may come of our working together.

    Willow

  6. Dan Miller Says:

    Seth, I have to question your characterization of Wikipedia as a cultish phenomenon (or at least, I think you’re unacceptably broadening the word “cult”). Wikipedia is a hobby; people work on it because they enjoy it, and they’re free to leave at any time. It’s not like anybody is being held there against their will. In fact, it seems awfully insulting to Wikipedia contributors to claim that they’re all incapable of seeing the truth of their exploitation.

    A serious question for you: how is Wikipedia different from, say, an anime convention or a softball league or any other organized social activity? Obviously, there are differences in scale and purpose; but you’ll find people who are extremely dedicated to their hobbies in any area.

  7. digital digs Says:

    intellectual elitism and Britannica blog

    Michael Gorman proclaims his support for intellectual elitism and meritocracy on Britannica blog. The post meanders through a couple of points as near as I can figure out, each questionable. 1. Gorman begins with poorly formed potshots at literacy and

  8. Rochelle Says:

    Re: Dan Miller–

    Wikipedia may be a hobby to the contributors, but but when Google cites Wikipedia as the first
    reference to a search, searchers see it as an authoritative source.

    The answer to Wikipedia has been Citizendium, and and I wish them well. The difference is that contributors must use their real names, and
    that contributions are reviewed by experts in the the field.

  9. re: web 2.0: the sleep of reason « Ghostfooting Says:

    […] UPDATE: In the continuing story of Michael Gorman, Web 2.0 critic, dancing his ideas into the glittering blogosphere, I must say that I do most heartily agree (also!) with this passage: The fact is that today’s young, as do the young in every age, need to learn from those who are older and wiser; they need to acquire good habits of study and research; and they need to be exposed to and learn to experience the richness of the human record. Pretending that the Internet and the Web have abolished those eternal verities is both intellectually dishonest and a proposal for cultural suicide. […]

  10. Seth Finkelstein Says:

    Dan, I get that objection a lot, and seriously, I think it’s too much a narrowing of the word “cult”. It reserves cult only for the most extreme, violent, organizations, whereas there are plenty of cults that are not suicidal and do not violently restrain members. Wikipedia is like the cults which go out to the woods to build a new society, not the ones which wants to kill themselves (and those are by definition self-limiting). It’s a scale - Wikipedia is not on the worst end, but by the same token, it’s further up the scale than many would like to admit.

    It’s elements like the guru-leader, the change-the-world mission, the work-for-free, the Us vs. Them, and so on, which make it problematic. You can take any specific element and find other examples, but I’d say putting them all together is an uncomfortable combination.

  11. WoodyE Says:

    Rochelle — Citizendium looks interesting.
    Wonder if it’ll build momentum & grow.
    First I’ve heard of it — is it being
    ‘marketed’ anywheres? Hm. Its stated goal
    is interesting too:
    “The ultimate goal of the Citizendium community, a global group of collaborators, is to create the most reliable and largest encyclopedia that they can.”

    Can’t find anything about intended audience
    (besides this very broad and mushy stuff about
    “all of humanity”)… but it seems that it
    (like Wikipedia) doesn’t intend to be
    authoritative enough to have academic heft.

  12. Martijn Kriens Says:

    There is at least one area where Wikipedia is better than Brittanica and others and that is in looking at different sides of an argument. A normal encyclopedia is biased based on the society it comes from. A British encyclopedia will deal differently with colonial England than a encyclopedia from India. One of the fascinating aspects of Wikipedia are the discussion pages. Looking how people from opposing sides discuss what to put in the main page often leads to a better insight. Examples can be found in articles dealing with the Israeli and Palestinian problems. I understand the risks Michael is mentioning but we should also see the potential for new patterns of information exchange it offers us.

  13. David Gerard Says:

    Here’s an idea to chew on: no-one will ever start a serious general encyclopedia again on the “one smart person writes the whole thing” (Aristotle, Pliny) or “a bunch of smart people write the whole thing (Britannia, Brockhaus) models - they’ll use wikis and massive collaboration. In fact, no-one will ever start a serious specialist encyclopedia on the one-smart-person or bunch-of-smart-people models again, because wikis already do the job much better, much faster. For general encyclopedias the earlier models are already economically unviable, for specialist encyclopedias they’re not only unviable but just can’t produce as useful results nearly as quickly.

  14. Dan Miller Says:

    “It’s elements like the guru-leader, the change-the-world mission, the work-for-free, the Us vs. Them, and so on, which make it problematic.”

    But these elements are present in any number of everyday organizations; this is, e.g., a near-perfect description of many political campaigns. I think that if you’re going to tag something with a label like “cult”, you have to go a lot further to show that it’s harming its members, society, or both.

  15. Seth Finkelstein Says:

    Dan, note I addressed that objection in the very next sentence: “You can take any specific element and find other examples, but I’d say putting them all together is an uncomfortable combination.”

    The restraining factor with political campaigns is that it’s pretty much time-limited - campaigns end. But at the extremes - note before you straw-man this, I said at the extremes, not the average - you definitely do see problems. This is not unremarked or even an original observation.

    On what basis do I have to show it’s harming its members? The guy selling flowers at the airport for the glory of the guru - may he likes being out in the fresh air (I’m being sarcastic). He’s not being held against his will. Yet I don’t think people would object so strenously if I said those folks are part of a cult.

  16. Cheryl Says:

    “The reader is completely ignorant of who wrote the original article, by whom it was modified, and for which reasons.”

    Without going into the issues of credentials, or if a teen-aged aficionado of the Civil War is less qualified than someone with an advanced degree to write a good article, this statement brings up a technical issue. At first blush, it does seem that the history of edits of Wikipedia articles is mysterious. However, with some digging into the mechanics of articles, one can mine a great deal of information on any given article’s history. Personally, I think that this has the potential of enhancing a person’s critical thinking skills. Some articles have nearly every sentence cited, others have none. Once a person starts feeling more at home in the Wikipedia world, comparing and contrasting the articles develops a much better sense of which articles are good and which ones are from not good to dismal.

    Ideally, a person develops a curiosity about, not only what makes an article good, but how to write a good article. My opinion is that this has the potential of making much better researchers and thinkers. When teachers promote Wikipedia as a resource, perhaps the best motivation to do so would be to push students to improve their skills at researching and writing, as well as developing their critical thinking skills. I can see time spent critiquing articles, re-writing the articles of interest for class, and even applying the Wikipedia standards to those articles as an interesting way for students to learn and enhance these skills.

    1f42
  17. Dan Miller Says:

    Seth, the implication when you use the word “cult” is that many or most of the members are being duped into a sort of false consciousness in which they don’t know what’s actually healthy for them (”But I will be happy if I participate in this mass marriage!”). Does Wikipedia meet this test? I’d say not; it seems to me that most major contributors–the “elite 1400″ or whatever the number is–are more-or-less healthy people who edit an encyclopedia as a hobby.

    Now, are there people who have problems with it? Yes, absolutely–Essjay is one example, but there are undoubtedly plenty of others. But these people exist in any hobby. In order to go further–to claim that Wikipedia is a cult–I’d say you’d have to demonstrate that these problems are more widespread than a few bad apples, and that they’re worse than the similar problems you get in any sort of social gathering, especially one of this nature. Are there more people being unhealthy about Wikipedia than about, say, Ren faires or model-train building or so on?

    In short, we should assume, until proven conclusively otherwise, that most people are capable of deciding how they want to spend their own free time. It’s simply not accurate to label something a cult that has very little element of coercion, brainwashing, or harm to its participants. In fact, the barriers to exit on Wikipedia are probably lower than they are on real-life projects like a block party.

  18. Dan Miller Says:

    Or, to put it a bit more humorously: can you honestly say that the average Wikipedia editor is in more trouble than these guys?

  19. Seth Finkelstein Says:

    But that same who-are-you-to-say argument is made in favor of the Moonies or the Krishnas, and so on. Do they harm their participants? Some people are happy, in some sense of the word, to follow the Great Leader. The “bad apples” argument can be made for any scandal. Not every cultist is some sort of crazed killer - there’s plenty of people just selling the flowers and chanting the mantra (or reverting the spam …). The folks in the airport are around a huge number of security officers, they certainly have ready access to law enforcement if they felt in any way threatened.

    Again, I think you’re reverting to the strawman of define cult to be extreme, say Wikipedia is not extreme, therefore it’s not a cult.

  20. Dan Miller Says:

    Right, but a reasonable person would look at the average Moonie in a group marriage and say, “This person has been brainwashed in some way; they’re clearly operating in a diminished capacity.” I don’t think that most people would make the same claim about the average Wikipedian.

  21. Seth Finkelstein Says:

    Ah, but why say they have been brainwashed? And how different is that from the reaction to the Wikipedia fanatic of “They have no life.”? (I’m not agreeing with this - I’m just pointing out it’s not as different as you might think. Why is edit-fiddling any more or less valid than flower-selling, except that it has a higher social status?).

  22. Dan Miller Says:

    I think that at least part of the standard would have to be a) How far removed is the behavior from whatever’s considered “normal” and b) How much impact does the behavior have on the person doing it? For example, moving to a remote compound and picking tomatoes with your toes is bizarre, and has a huge impact on the person’s life; editing for a half-hour a day is relatively widespread, or at least not unheard of, and you can still hold down a job, go out with friends, and live a normal life while also engaging in this hobby. If people routinely edited for 16 hours a day and lost their jobs because of it, that would bolster your argument, but I don’t see that happening too often (Wikipediholism aside–any subculture generates in-jokes and folk tales, obv.)

  23. Willow Says:

    With all respect to Dan and Seth, this cavilling about the definition of “cult” seems like a little silly, and unworthy of the Web 2.0 forum.

    Instead, please consider addressing Dr. Gorman’s key contentions, such as (1) whether Wikipedia and Wikipedians respect scholarly authority; (2) whether Wikipedians could in principle produce authoritative articles on topics of traditional scholarship with meticulous referencing of scholarly literature; (3) whether Wikipedia can and does help in disseminating scholarly knowledge to non-scholars; and (4) whether Wikipedia is innocuous for the progress of traditional scholarship. My answers to these four questions is “yes”, by the arguments and examples given above. But others’ input to the discussion would be most welcome.

    Here’s a fifth question for Dr. Gorman and his supporters to consider, one that I hope is sincerely thought-provoking. I have had the benefit of the elite classical education that you wish for all people. I know six languages fluently and a smattering of many others. I recite Homer for pleasure while walking and compose dactylic hexameter for laughs. I’ve translated Aristotle, Leibniz, Maupertuis, Euler and Einstein from the original Greek, Latin, French and German and offered the originals and my translations up for free on the appropriate Wikisources. I’ve written extensively at Wikipedia on topics ranging from biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics as well as more genteel, humanistic topics such as knitting, Joseph Johnson and (forgive me) the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Now ask yourself why; why would someone of such an education choose to contribute anonymously to Wikipedia? When you’ve understood that, I think you will understand the nature of Wikipedia and its contributors better, and perhaps you will have more sympathy for both, and be blessed with a broader and better mind.

    With respect and kind wishes for all, Willow

  24. tpanelas Says:

    We’re providing cavil-to-cavil coverage. (Groan. Sorry; couldn’t resist.)

    Tom Panelas

  25. 2789
  26. Anthony Sebastian Says:

    WoodyE,June 26th, 2007 at 9:07 pm has doubts about the “academic heft” of Citizendium (http://en.citizendium.org).

    One can, of course, not know Woody’s criteria for “academic heft”.

    I wonder if he has looked at many User pages to view the credentials of the real-name-verified editors of the various Workgroups?

    I also wonder if he has read many of the Workgroup-approved articles?

  27. Anthony Sebastian Says:

    In response to Willow’s “I have been writing a Wikipedia article, “Kepler problem in general relativity”, that explains two of the key predictions used to support Einstein’s theory of general relativity. I do not claim to be a physicist, but I have supported my article with references to established textbooks and literature. The article is still in its infancy, being only a few weeks old, but I have high hopes that it will improve still further, as I add layperson-friendly explanations, more Figures, information about its history and its present relevance, more references, etc. (I apologize if its contents are unintelligible; they’re intended for elite scholars who understand calculus. ;) The authority of my article flows from its logical train of thought and the referencing of its postulates and conclusions..” As an experiment, Willow, you could register as an author for Citizendium, submit your final or near-final article, and see if you find that the expert-guided process helps you develop a better article.

  28. Britannica mounts elitist defence against Wikipedia. Germany funds theirs. « Flesh is Grass Says:

    […] Encyclopaedia Britannica, which would like nothing better than for it all to fold, takes spirited pot shots from the side. Michael Gorman’s case is that there is a: “… collective pretence that the established criteria of learning—notably literacy and intelligence—are dilutable. True literacy—the ability to interact with complex texts and the ability to express complex ideas in clear prose—is being equated with ill-defined concepts such as “visual literacy,” “computer literacy,” and “21st-century literacies” as if they could make up for illiteracy and a-literacy. Some have proposed that playing video games is an activity on the same plane as reading texts and equally beneficial to mental growth. These attempts to downplay the central part literacy plays in the life of the mind are malign attempts to come to grips with the changes being wrought by the digital revolution through abandoning the fundamental values of learning that have obtained in Western societies since classical Greece.” […]

  29. Willow Says:

    Dear Anthony,

    Thank you for your delightful invitation! But I hope you will forgive me if I remain at Wikipedia for the time being; I’m quite devoted to the GFDL (which Citizendium has not yet adopted, I believe) and I would miss my wiki-friends terribly. Every artist has their medium; as you’ve chosen CZ, I’ve taken up at WP.

    That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, though. Let me make you a counter-offer, or rather an antidoron. If you shepherd my final article to acceptance at Citizendium, which I hope will not be too difficult, I will write you a Wikipedia article on the physiology of the loop of Henle (or any other nephrological topic you like) that will delight you beyond measure. Agreed? Let us two set a good example for the discourse of civilized people; though we live in this blogosphere like the spirits in Dante’s Limbo, grace and beauty can thrive even here.

    Willow

  30. Badger Gravling Says:

    Surely the answer is that any professor that accepts a view without citations from numerous sources is being lazier than his students.

    Yes, an essay or opinion formed entirely from Wikipedia is subject to any errors inherent in the content. But the same can be said of any piece of work produced from a sole source. Anything written at any point will be subject to a conscious or subconscious bias on the part of the author.

    As a former student and now journalist, I’ve always been taught to make sure I verify facts from as many primary and secondary sources as is possible, until any doubt can be satisfied. There are times when Wikipedia can be a very useful reference tool (Pop culture for example), but I’d never use it alone, just as I wouldn’t use just one history book to write an essay about the Vietnam War.

    The important lesson would be to not only look at a variety of sources, but to combine different resources. There is always a chance other internet sites will have cribbed from the same original source, whereas published written works do at least tend to offer different interpretations.

  31. Steve Says:

    Michael,

    You said:

    “Intelligence is the ability to think quickly and logically, to absorb new ideas and to incorporate them into existing knowledge, to express ideas clearly in speech and writing—in short, to learn and grow in understanding.”

    Do you intend to say that those who think slowly but deeply, and employ intuition, visual analogies, mataphor, or other alternatives to formal logic are unintelligent?

    I will reference a single counter-example which is Friedrich Kekule’s discovery of the ring structure of the benzene molecule - which came to him in a dream!

    An amusing account of Kekule’s career, including his own description of the benzene ring discovery can be found at the URL below:

    http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/ci/1992/Kekule.html

    -Steve

    P.S. Seth, just what the hell is wrong with going out into the woods to build a new society?I think you’re just predjudiced against anybody who chooses to reject the assumptions and customs of mainstream society.

  32. eliot bates Says:

    There are some interesting points in this blog post. One typifies the most typical fear of citizen-edited research sources:

    “It was this “merciless editing” that exasperated Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Braid, when asked recently about his entry in Wikipedia. “The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me,” he told The New York Times. When asked why he did not correct the errors, he shrugged off the suggestion: “The next day someone will fix it back.” Of course, Wikipedia’s credo is that the inaccurate and crazed will be discovered and corrected or eliminated by the swarm of volunteers.”

    This is not an astute nor learned opinion on wikipedia articles. The assumption above is that if someone improved an article it would be edited back to its earlier, impoverished form. I’ve edited some on wikipedia and never witnessed such behavior (though there are a couple of token examples that could be rolled out where a dispute between two editors tied up one article for a couple days, but wikipedia has an effective system to freeze articles and prevent this type of editing). In fact, I have been invited on multiple occasions by other (much more prolific) wikipedia writers to assist with articles in which I have academic expertise. This in particular is the best aspect of wikipedia, as many encyclopedias in academia (I’m thinking of music encyclopedias such as the New Groves and the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music) contain only single-authored entries, many of which would benefit themselves by the knowledge contained by other experts in the field.

    Thus, I would argue there is absolutely no reason nor utility to assume that good article improvements will inherently be rejected by wikipedia editors/admins as a whole.

    I would also question any assumptions that sole-authored articles are inherently more scholarly than collaboratively-written and collaboratively-edited pieces. Though humanities research tends to be sole-authored due to the peculiarities of the tenure review process, it does not logically follow that the process ensures the highest quality scholarship. Collaborative written and edited projects are a necessary extension of academia, encyclopedia, and other public knowledge resources. Wikipedia is one such experiment - others may ultimately produce higher quality work.

    21f8
  33. Seth Finkelstein Says:

    “Thus, I would argue there is absolutely no reason nor utility to assume that good article improvements will inherently be rejected by wikipedia editors/admins as a whole.”

    Consider: I walked down [bad neighborhood] late at night. Nothing happened to me. A few people waved. Thus, I would argue there is absolutely no reason nor utility to assume that wealthy people walking in bad neighborhoods late at night will come to harm.

    Does every expert get into trouble with the crowd? No. Is there an incentive? YES. Now, if you have lots of patience and a long-suffering disposition and are working in an area without too much controversy, sure, that dramatically lowers the chance of having problems. But that’s by no means true all the time.

    Counter-example: “Wikipedia Follies”
    http://crookedtimber.org/2007/02/04/wikipedia/

  34. Doug Holton Says:

    The problem is most of the people advocating Wikipedia haven’t tried seriously contributing to it. It looks very good on the surface. They don’t know the dark side, as Seth Finkelstein is referring to above. The banning, the blocking, the deleting. I wonder actually if Wikipedia is currently blocking more school districts than school districts are blocking Wikipedia.

    Jason Scott also has explained the underbelly of Wikipedia well also:
    http://www.cow.net/transcript.txt
    http://www.archive.org/details/20060408-jscott-wikipedia
    http://www.archive.org/details/20070427-jscott-brickipedia
    http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000060.html
    http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000067.html
    http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000329.html
    http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000331.html
    http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000394.html

    Without scratching the surface of Wikipedia, people remain in a honeymoon state, refusing to believe there is anything wrong with Wikipedia or that any alternatives have any advantages at all over Wikipedia (such as Britannica, Citizendium, Yahoo Answers, etc.):
    http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/02/community_and_h.php

  35. eliot bates Says:

    Seth, I’m genuinely confused by your line of reasoning. In my original statement there is a key word - “inherently” - which is the crux of the argument, but you seem to have ignored. Wikipedia editors and admins, from my experience, spend the vast majority of their effort contributing to articles that have major deficiencies (particularly ones that don’t exist). Some other editors take a more editorial style, fixing punctuation and spelling issues with already-written articles.

    Are there situations when hundreds of edits happen to an article due to a dispute between two or more editors? Of course. Are there situations when academic journals are filled with back and forth personal arguments or marginally scholarly disputes over certain issues in a field, in the end producing absolutely no advancement of knowledge on a particular issue? Of course. That’s the nature of being argumentative and territorial, an aspect of human nature that is no more prevalent on wikipedia than it is in academia. In academia, bigger words may be exchanged. But the intention, effect, and cause are the same.

    So, is there any reason to assume that a well written wikipedia article will be worsened by other editors? No, there is no reason to assume that an article will be worsened, based on the history of wikipedia pages and how editors have interrelated. An article *might* be worsened, and the example on the link you presented is one such case. But there is no inherent property of wikipedia that leads us to assume that articles, in normal circumstances, will be worsened.

    Anyway, it’s apparent that you’re set out to prove the disfunctionality of wikipedia, and will take any small anecdotes you can find as ammunition in your campaign. There are things I think are significant deficiencies in wikipedia, particularly the problem of anonymous editors. Citizendium addresses this issue well (but hasn’t developed the extent of articles that wikipedia currently offers). But I don’t believe that an argument hashed out on the pages of wikipedia is a particularly noteworthy occurrence, any more so than personal spats that happen at academic conferences or in the back pages of academic journals. If it happens 20 times or 30 times or even more, that’s to be expected considering the millions of pages.

  36. Seth Finkelstein Says:

    I understood that “inherently”, but frankly, I considered it as just functioning as a way of saying that if Wikipedia is a cesspool, ignore that, because in theory, “inherently”, it could be a sparkling lake. And then argue that all the obvious social flaws which make it a cesspool aren’t “inherent”, but simply dismissible deviations from the ideal.

    Forgive me if I’m being unfair in the following, but to quickly outline the problem I see: There’s a certain Web 2.0 evangelism argument which is basically a rallying cry of: “NO WORSE THAN THE WORST!”. That is, when someone points out the system really doesn’t live up to the hype, and in fact is a morass of the bad aspects of its rivals, the booster says something like “Yes, it has bad aspects - BUT THE RIVAL HAS BAD STUFF TOO! Thus, since they both have bad stuff [here is the maneuver], you can’t say one is any worse than the other, they both have their strengths and weaknesses, so they are morally equivalent”.

    The problem with Wikipedia is that in essence that its average case is a lot closer to the worst case of traditional publications. This is in fact arguably “inherent”, because Wikipedia quality mechanisms are quite fragile - they rely on traditional expert sources, and in recruiting honest people for cultish reasons to do unpaid maintenance labor against the hordes of vandals.

    “So, is there any reason to assume that a well written Wikipedia article will be worsened by other editors?”
    Yes. Because there are lot more idiots than experts. That’s simple.

    Note what I DID NOT SAY: The idiots win every time. All editors are stupid. Every article has marching morons overwhelming it. Nobody fights off the trolls. An expert is never unfairly mistaken for a crank. Etc.

    Knocking down those strawmen would not refute my point.

    A major problem is that it’s extremely hard to discuss all this. There’s a huge amount of noise generated to hype it, so any thread gets bogged down in marketing statements designed or evolved to distract attention from the above. So eventually the careful thinking tends to get driven out, since it’s much more work than the attention-mongering (note, in both directions!). Which is sort of a recursive parable for what’s wrong with Wikipedia.

    278d
  37. Willow Says:

    This argument is beginning to grow repetitive, although it bears a charming likeness to the Prologue in Heaven chapter of Goethe’s Faust, where Mephistopheles bellyaches about humanity, and God replies, “Well, you know my servant, Faust?”… Great stories have great beginnings. :)

    I think I can speak as the person here with the most experience of Wikipedia, having written hundreds of articles there and made over 12,000 contributions. To be sure, there is much silliness and wasted time there, but you are foolish to close your eyes to the great good that is there as well. An intelligent reader is able to thresh and sift the wheat from the chaff; and the wheat, I believe, has made Wikipedia the 9th most visited spot on the Internet, not the hype nor the delusions of an indiscriminate hoi polloi. St. Makarios’ words on the human heart apply to Wikipedia as well:

    “Within the heart are unfathomable depths; in it is the workshop of righteousness and of wickedness. Dragons and lions and poisonous creatures are there, rough uneven paths and gaping chasms. Yet likewise there are angels; light and life are there, heavenly cities and all the treasures of grace.”

    Forgive me, but your criticisms of Wikipedia do not reflect well on you; you would do better to be more balanced and nuanced in your assessments of Wikipedia. We should all imitate Tom Panelas’ gracious humor and sincere questioning, and remember our own limited understanding with humility

    Willow

  38. Socrates Says:

    it seems M.Gorman is spontaneously revealing his value system. at the top: literacy. is this surprising for a career librarian? next in his value heirarchy is his definition of “intelligence”. i hope you can see that this is only your system of values and has no objective authority. the history of world thought has been shaped by people that do not fit into this value heirarchy whatsoever, from religious leaders, military conquerers, visual artists, composers and maybe even your own mother.

  39. Carol Says:

    What a wonderful forum this has been, especially for anyone unfamiliar with the many serious issues at stake with our new technology. One doesn’t have to agree with everything Gorman, Keen, or Mann argued - or argued by Battles, boyd, or Shirky on the other side - to glean the fact that serious issues do exist, serious debates deserve attention, and that the digital world is far from settled. Thanks to Britannica for highlighting these important issues. And thanks to the Chicago Tribune for bringing this forum to the public’s attention.

  40. Kevin Cantu Says:

    In the USA, I fear that this movement against the experts on the internet is mirrored by political success of people increasingly dogmatic and proudly ignorant of science and meaningful research. Evolution? The environment? Sexuality?

    It was a religious man who said that “A nation or a civilization that continues to produce softminded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.”

    Still, I think it would be good for us all if Martin Luther King’s sermon on the topic was available for free, on the internet, and a top Google hit, so that more people could have profound ideas like his close to their fingertips. It might solve some problems.

  41. T. G. McFadden Says:

    As he so often does, Michael Gorman has hit the nail squarely on the head in his recent blog postings on Web 2.0. And, as they so often do, his critics can find neither the nail nor the hammer. Full disclosure: I rarely disagree with anything Gorman writes or publishes, especially his recent work on the nature and content of librarianship (including his book co-authored with Walt Crawford). So we can dispense with ad hominem arguments on both sides of the issue right off the bat.

    Perhaps the most interesting issue that Gorman raises is that of scholarly authority in an online world. And the question he poses succinctly is this: As we move to publishing online (in addition to print, for instance), do we face a new understanding of the nature of “authority”? Is what has traditionally constituted authority in these matters suddenly being transformed into something else entirely? Or, is the concept of “authority” simply doomed altogether in the hive world? Do we now need to speak of “collective intelligence” rather than, say, “collective ignorance” or “collective stupidity”?

    It might be useful to explore, just for a moment, the origin and core meaning of the concept of “authority” in this context. The primal origins of the concept and word, of course, derive from the idea of the “author”—that is, the person(s) in the best position to know about what he or she has written, claimed, said, or otherwise created. Over time, the concept has developed along two parallel lines: (1) the concept of having the power, or right, to do something or compel someone else to do something; (2) the concept of being in a position to have the final say (or at least the most credible say) about a matter. Thus we speak of “authoritative opinion”, “authoritative statement”, and to provide the “authority” for a claim or statement. It is clearly implied that a person or persons may acquire or forfeit authority in the latter sense as quickly as they may be purged from a position of authority in the first sense. But while political downfall, say, can be simply a matter of brute force or weight of numbers, such is presumably not the case with the loss of intellectual authority. Intellectual authority is not a democratic concept at all. This fact about the concept is quite independent of modes or formats of publication or dissemination. Just as the legal concept of an “expert witness” transcends time and place, so the concept of intellectual (or scholarly) authority does not depend on the mode of distribution of opinion and scholarship.

    There are two questions about authority that must be kept scrupulously distinct: (1) What confers authority, or constitutes authoritativeness, and (2) How can we tell who (or what) has it? I may be a saint, but perhaps no one can tell that from outward appearances. Gorman is asking us to consider the second question, really, rather than the first. Once we get beyond the idea that every opinion about any matter is equally worthy of our attention and respect, then we are still left with the question of how to decide whose opinion to trust. This is the question that Michael Jensen has raised in his Chronicle of Higher Education article on the “new metrics of authority” (CHE, 6/15/2007). As we move increasingly to the online publication and dissemination of scholarly and intellectual work, do we need to find new ways to measure authoritativeness? Or does the concept simply evaporate altogether in the hive world?

    Let’s assume for a moment that what constitutes authority, or authoritativeness, can be explained in a fairly straightforward, pre-analytic way—something like the following from Black’s Law Dictionary: “…by reason of education or special experience [having] knowledge respecting a subject matter about which persons having no particular training are incapable of forming an accurate opinion or making a correct deduction.” Surely we can all agree that, if we had to bet our lives on an opinion about something, we would want to bet on the opinion of someone who qualifies as an authority in more or less this way. But how are we going to recognize such an individual when we need him or her? By what markers or criteria are we going to identify a proper authority and not merely a pretender?
    In the halcyon days of print publication in the academic and scholarly worlds, we had fairly well understood ways of doing this (even if they sometimes failed to distinguish the good from the bad; witness the Alan Sokal affair, for which there is a Wikipedia entry, by the way). The distribution of not just “information” but actual scholarly and intellectual content and opinion on the Internet is not merely pushing the limits of traditional ways of marking authority, but rapidly moving beyond any semblance of possibility that we can continue to cling to traditional strategies. Nor should we want to. But that is a far cry from giving up the traditional concept of “authority” itself. We should agree with Jensen (and Gorman) that many of the values of scholarship are not well served yet by the Internet: contemplation, abstract synthesis, construction of argument. Authority by virtue of applause and popularity, Jensen observes, is not a satisfactory substitute. Gorman would doubtless agree that what is needed most urgently as we move on to Web 3.0 (or whatever) are new ways of identifying, publishing, and making available to critical analysis and review the results of scholarly and intellectual inquiry in ways that both preserve the traditional values of authority and yet recognize the sometimes tenuous and fluid nature of that authority.

    229b
  42. Stephen Ewen Says:

    The dialog here between Anthony Sebastian and Willow is instructive.

    One can immediately know Dr. Sebastian’s identity and eminent credentials by simple Google search.

    But with “Willow”, all we have are numerous very high-sounding claims. I seem to recall a fellow going by “Essjay” who spoke in a remarkably similar, hauntingly familiar fashion.

    Mere words are not enough. Identity and authority are not seperable and never will be.

  43. Willow Says:

    Dear Mr. Ewen,

    A lovely painting or a breathtaking poem is still beautiful even if its artist is unknown. So too the articles on Wikipedia should be judged for their intrinsic quality, rather than by their provenance. I’ll keep this pithy; I appreciate the privilege of posting here, and hope that I do not err against decorum by contradicting my hosts.

    In the interests of friendship between Wikipedia and Citizendium, I would be happy to write an article on renal physiology, specifically the loop of Henle, that hopefully would delight Dr. Sebastian, a kidney expert. Let us reconvene here on September 1st, and we shall see what your dual assessments are. Unlike Essjay, I understand the difference between a human and a kangaroo rat, between aldosterone and vasopressin, between glomerulitis and editcountitis. ;)

    Please consider that the scholarly authority of Wikipedia can derive from two sources, neither of which requires identity. First, it flows from the logic of its reasoning, as in the mathematical derivations found in its articles on the Equipartition theorem or the Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector. Second, it flows from the authority of the corpus of peer-reviewed publications cited in the article. Although some may argue that a secondary authority is needed to vouch that Wikipedia’s derivations or references are correct, I feel that anyone capable of understanding the derivation or reference itself is capable of judging its accuracy in the Wikipedia article, especially since direct online links to derivations and references are often provided by Wikipedia. A good example might be the Wikipedia “Photon” article, which gives over 80 scientific references for specific assertions, including many direct links to the works of Nobel laureates. Are they not trustworthy?

    Allow me to make three other points that anyone with sufficient expertise may check for themselves.

    First, I contend that the Featured Articles at Wikipedia are an accurate and complete depiction of the basics of their subjects. I have invited Drs. Gorman, McHenry and McNamee to summon a trusted Britannica physics expert such as Christine Sutton to judge some of those that I have helped to write, such as Equipartition theorem, Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector and Photon. Although I have written other Featured Articles, physics articles have the advantage that they are (in general) unambiguously right or wrong, leaving little room for quibbling. If a trusted expert in good faith can find any other encyclopedia that covers these topics in greater depth, breadth or accuracy, I will concede Wikipedia’s inferiority. Conversely, if the expert finds them to be good articles that could be accepted in the Britannica itself, it would be a gracious gesture for the Britannica and its bloggers to accept us as fellow encyclopedians and accord our articles respect, when they have earned it.

    Second, I cannot agree with Dr. Gorman’s fear that Wikipedia will render my generation unscholarly and unappreciative of culture. Consider what you have seen with your own eyes. I am a devoted Wikipedian; yet here and in Dr. McHenry’s recent “Benoit” essay, I have quoted, I hope wittily, from Aristotle, Ben Zoma (in Hebrew), Cervantes, Dante, Dickens, Einstein, Goethe, Homer (in Greek), St. Makarios, the Gospel of Matthew (in Greek), medieval manuscripts (in Latin), Plato, Seneca (in Latin), and Wilde. (If you missed some of the more sly references, I’ll be glad to point them out.) As you may see from my user page, I’ve published translations from Latin, French, Greek and German on the Wikisources; you may judge them for yourself, since I’ve also posted the original texts and you can view them side-by-side. (Start with Leibniz’s “Confessio Philosophi”, it’s a gem!) To help with my bona fides, here’s a little self-portrait in Homeric hexameter to amuse you and our readers

    Φρόνιμον ως οι όφεις και ακέραιον εγω ως
    η περιστερά, πρόβατ’ εν μέσω λύκ’ εριζόντων

    Admittedly, it doesn’t scan perfectly, but surely you concede that the caricature of illiterate, unscholarly Wikipedians is not fair? What do you conclude from the fact that a Wikipedian is quoting the Great Books accurately, composing humorous Greek poetry and citing evidence for her argument? Not to mention writing accurate articles in science and culture?

    Third, I cannot agree that Wikipedia threatens the progress of traditional scholarship. Is it plausible that Wikipedia will cause professors to forget how to argue for a conclusion, or scientists to unlearn the scientific method? Please consider that encyclopedias are generally not cited as authoritative sources in scholarly literature; why should Wikipedia be any different? Similarly, I do not think that traditional scholarship will be cheapened by being published online; its strength derives from its reasoning and its evidence, which do not depend on its mode of delivery, as pointed out above.

    Good gentleman, I wish only a serene and fair-minded consideration of the work of Wikipedians. It is not scholarly to dismiss their sincere efforts as trivial or even dangerous to society without first critically evaluating their best efforts, such as the Featured Articles I have cited above. I wish you could see the good in Wikipedia, and be willing to collaborate with it for the common good.

    Willow

  44. Richard Says:

    The pomposity of “Willow” is truly astounding. Undoubtedly she’s her own best friend and favorite writer to boot. There’s a reason why she and other “Essays” argue for their anonymity, and her bloviating here on Britannica’s dime simply further undermines Wikipedia’s staunchest defenders.

  45. Seth Finkelstein Says:

    Now, now, Wikipedia-boosters have no monopoly on pomposity! :-)

    I’m very sympathetic to the emotional investment that Willow has. And fact, the exploitation of that sort of person is one of the reasons I have an emotional dislike of Wikipedia myself.

    Unfortunately, the following misses the point: “It is not scholarly to dismiss their sincere efforts as trivial or even dangerous to society without first critically evaluating their best efforts, …”

    As I explained, the claim has never been that every single page in Wikipedia is trash, all the time. But rather, it’s not reliable, and the worthwhile material is more self-disproving of the PR than otherwise.

    When I use an encylopedia, I want to be able to apply a modicum of trust that the material isn’t some kook’s ranting, or a prankster trying to trick me. Wikipedia can’t offer that. I don’t want to need to do a detailed background check on anonymous authors. And the rhetorical manner in which it tries to shift all moral responsibility to the reader - even attempting to impose some sort of obligation for a reader to fix Wikipedia’s messes! - just underscore its failings. That may work for marketing purposes, but it’s very negative for intellectual credibility. And the retreat that it’s a link-list is little comfort.

    You, Willow, may be an encyclopedian - but that does not make Wikipedia an encyclopedia. And that makes all the difference.

    1fbc
  46. Stephen Ewen Says:

    Wow, dejavu with Essjay.

    See his letter defending Wikipedia to a professor who would not let his students use Wikipedia as a source: http://www.webcitation.org/5N2MZaMWP

  47. Jane Bell Says:

    Oh, thanks Socrates (June 30th, 2007 at 4:47 pm) for solving that debate for all of us.

    Here I was thinking that silly attributes like “literacy” and “intelligence” might be something worth finding in an author of a written encyclopedia.

    How silly I have been! Perhaps I should have been reading Wikipedia so I could have learned more about why I was held captive by such foolish notions.

  48. Losing Sleep / Email is for the Old Says:

    […] I can feel my inner Michael Gorman beginning to stir. There is a luddite inside of me that wants to get out. It’s like… luddite vomit. I can taste it at the back of my throat. If I let it all out I’ll feel better, but then there’ll be a big mess. […]

  49. Tim Vickers Says:

    One of my students recently called me over to the computer and asked my what the “Neutrality disputed” tag at the top of a Wikipedia article meant. I told her to read the article and then the discussion page, to give her an idea of both the general outline of the topic as well as the views of the two sides involved.

    That’s not really something you can do with a print encyclopedia.

  50. Stephen Ewen Says:

    Tim, on the other hand, a disputed WP article and its accompanying talk page not at all mean one will get a real picture of the real disputes in a field or topic. There are exceedingly better alternatives to understanding a field’s debates that are also far better use of a student’s time.

    For example, EBs article on Evolution contains 3,843 words devoted to Religious views, and views about Intelligent design. After that, a great place to send students is the Taking Sides series by McGraw-Hill/Dushkin.

    In such a way, we can be sure we are not sending our students into a misleading exercise led by what is often the harangues of anonymous cranks.

  51. Stephen Ewen Says:

    Tim, one other resource I should have put above is the Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center, available through Thompson Gale http://find.galegroup.com/ovrc/

  52. RC Ayers Says:

    Pulease! Doesn’t anyone see the obvious “Let’s protect learning things the hard way”? Our esteemed author cares not for anyone learngin things the easy and efficient way AND with LESS money exchanged form our pockets to his. Time for people like Gorman to move on the new things. Honestly, 99% of everything that is taught in colleges CAN be learned efficiently on the internet given the user interfaces currently on hand. There is nothing that says it has to be earned the hard way, paid for by thousands of dollars when it should be ENTIRELY FREE! Any one who goes to college buys books at a premium, books written by professors who no longer teach. Topics are re-written overand over again. In this modern age there is less and less meaningful purpose for a brick and mortar college to exist. The entire world would spend less for more were colleges abolished, closed in exchange for widely published materials on the internet with out anyone claiming ownership of the knowledge or the “hard” means by which Gorman says it must be taught. BS! If a student can learn a given subject task in minutes rather than several man-weeks driving to and sitting in a classroom getting his learning cafeteria style - then LET THE STUDENT GAIN KNOWLEDGE QUICIKLY AND CHEAPLY. There is no rule that says common knowledge should not be free, gained quickly and electronically. Goodbye to physical colleges and hellow to every possible public knowledge topic becoming widely published for all to see, read, experience electronically. Enough of the amount of money, time and effort to be spoon fed tiny bits of knowlege the old fashed way! Move on Gorman. Move on professors and more out of the way of the information super highway. Give up on all the slow expensive old ways!

  53. Mike Segor Says:

    The argument between the champions of Britannica vs. Wikipedia reminds me of the arguments between the “Intelligent Design” advocates and evolution-oriented scientists.

    What side you’re on might boil down to whether you want to live in a well-ordered, authoritarian world with an acknowledged and respected Big Boss running it, or you are more comfortable in a sprawling, messy, trial-and-error, do-your-own-thing world.

    As in the religion-vs-science debate, each side sees impending doom in the prospect of the other side prevailing. My feeling is that as long as the wide spectrum of human personality exists, so will both sides of this eternal tug-of-war remain viable, as they have for centuries past.

    But I’m also confident that these large-scale collaborative intellectual efforts are not a fad. It is quite possible that we will devise mechanisms that ensure that a majority of entries into such an enterprise push it in the direction of higher quality. If that can be accomplished, then the result inevitably acquires more usefulness over time and will at some point surpass the “intelligently designed” traditional product by most practical measures.

    What is astonishing to me, is how many people are willing to volunteer their time to this effort. This is an intriguing topic for sociological study. Although we have just recently developed the enabling technology, emergent collective intelligence is already irresistably fascinating to us. No one will be able to stop this new form of evolution or predict its path.

  54. degree Says:

    I doubt someone would even think of harming Wikipedia.. It always helped me and my friends .. if I can’t help a certain article I leave it alone .. but I don’t mess with them!

    14e4
  55. ginandtacos.com » Blog Archive » The Sum of Human Knowledge. Says:

    […] Unlike some, I have no beef with Wikipedia. Such a source of collective information was going to happen on the Internet at some point, and the model they use strikes me as the best way to handle it. However there are two things that occur regularly on the site that get me laughing: […]

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