Wikipedia
Whose knowledge is it anyway?
“Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.” Wikimedia Foundation - the creators of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia, officially launched in 2001, is the largest single body of encyclopaedic knowledge on the Internet. It has grown to contain over three million articles in its database – larger even than the legendary Encyclopaedia Britannica – and there are currently 253 language editions of Wikipedia. But Wikipedia is more than just an encyclopaedia: it’s an evolving collection of articles that are created and maintained by its users. Anyone can visit the site and create or edit an article - anonymously. This both provides a huge source of research material and also gives writers a great opportunity to contribute in their areas of expertise.
Searching for information on Wikipedia is as easy as it is on most good websites: just enter a search term and then follow related links. Contributing is also easy with Wikipedia: simply look up a topic that you know something about and click the ‘Edit’ link. Now edit and modify as you think appropriate. The only guidelines are that you should try to write about the topic in a neutral voice without bias or prejudice and try to add citations pointing to academic sources whenever you can. If you are an expert on a little-known topic, you can start a new article – this is a great way to expand your knowledge by putting it in the open where it will allow others to modify your contribution. It may call for a tough skin as you see your hard-written article torn to pieces and reassembled but the result will be an article that grows over time to include a wide range of in-depth information concerning the topic.
Even if you don’t think your standard of writing is good enough, you can still contribute and leave it to one of the many users who thrive on polishing others’ contributions. That’s one of the advantages of Wikipedia: it is organic and will evolve by the collaborative effort of anonymous users. But is it really an advantage to allow anonymous updates? Can Wikipedia be a reliable source of information or is it little more than a virtual wall covered with graffiti? The reality is that the majority of users strive for accuracy and, although articles may oscillate between different versions of the truth, agreement usually results in a stable and valuable article.
How is the accuracy assessed?
Vandalism does occur, however, and that articles can be modified incorrectly by anyone or even deleted completely can make it difficult to trust what is written.
The quality of information on the site relies on the rapid correction of faulty information and this is expedited by the ability of users to be notified of changes to articles. The effect is that users interested in particular topics watch over the relevant articles and assess changes by referring to their own knowledge or cited sources and, if needed, they correct the changes or revert the article to an earlier version.
Like many simple ideas, this kind of open editing has deep ramifications: some say that it encourages a democratic agreement of knowledge but we humans are not always democratic. For example, what is to stop supporters of one political party from defacing the Wikipedia entries of their competitors? Nothing – initially, but the discrepancy will usually be corrected quickly by more impartial community members. This is one of the basic assumptions that seems to work well for Wikipedia – that the large number of reliable editors will counteract the effects of biased (or even malicious) editors. It does seem to work well, indeed, IBM calculated that half of all acts of vandalism are corrected within a few minutes and even if the vandal repeats the defacement the far greater number of honest members will keep reverting the article until the vandal gives up.
There are cases where this falls down and a misinformed majority disagree with informed experts. For example, the scientist Mendeleyev was the 13th child in his family but Wikipedia has regularly changed this between 14th to 17th child with one piece of sheer vandalism saying that Mendeleyev was “the oldest of five hundred million children”.
Whose knowledge?
Do you let the self-appointed representatives of the world’s knowledge create the ultimate reference source or do you look to the experts that have travelled the conventional route to recognised qualifications? The answer seems to be that we have to start using our heads. Before trusting what is written in any Wikipedia article we should – as with any article of importance – double-check the sources and confirm the facts whenever possible and if you find the article in Wikipedia is wrong – correct it!
Wikipedia has advantages and limitations: it has excellent coverage of technical topics and articles are often added quickly and, therefore, coverage of current events can be very good.
As long as you think critically and assess the article’s sources Wikipedia can be used as a source of useful information and even if you find an article lacking it is still a great starting point for any research.
What is a Wiki?
A Wiki is a website that allows anyone to create and edit web pages using nothing more than a web browser. Wikipedia is the most well known wiki but there are many others covering many specialist areas both public and private. The Wikipedia Foundation has also spawned several sister projects such as: Wiktionary, a dictionary project; Wikiquote, a collection of quotations; and Wikibooks, a collection of collaboratively written free books.
There are also many other wikis on specific topics such as wikiHow (www.wikihow.com) which specialises in how-to articles and eBay Wiki (www.ebaywiki.com) which contains many articles on selling and buying on eBay. There are also search engines that catalogue the contents of thousands of wikis: try Quika (www.quika.com) and Wiki.com (www.wiki.com).
© K. Valongo 2008
