Dear All,

Speaking as an occasional writer for conventional encyclopedias other
than the Encyclopedia Britannica, I share Don’s experience. The point
of an encyclopedia is that it is an expert document designed to
summarize and convey what we know about a topic at this point in
history. The length given to an article generally depends on the
importance the editors give to the subject: within the word limit,
authors explain the subject to the reader. A few excellent encyclopedias
have essentially no word limit, but these are generally top-quality
online reference works such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
where the net makes it possible for expert writers to address serious
readers.

My brief experience as a Wikipedia author mirrors that of Timothy
Messer-Kruse. Wikipedia has some virtues – a great many people enter
the ranks of authors contributing little snippets or great gobbets of
information. One imaginations that if Wikipedia should survive for a few
decades, the process of evolution may well turn it into a serious
reference work rather than an interesting, sometimes useful, and often
unreliable quick go-to source.

But Wikipedia has a great flaw, and this flaw is built into the
Wikipedia culture. Wikipedia relies in general on blind review by
pseudonymous editors. Unlike authors and editors at a real encyclopedia,
there is no way to determine who these people are or the level of their
expertise. Unlike an academic journal, there is no way to determine
anything about a snippet of information or the author who asserts it,
since published authors also remain anonymous. This is not merely blind
review – it is blind authorship.

Knowing the way that real editors work at academic presses and
publishing firms, my inference is that most Wikipedia editors are
amateurs, often passionate, and generally ignorant. One gains standing
in the editorial ranks based on the number of articles to which one has
contributed or edited. The votes of some editors seem to count for more
than the votes of other editors. Many editors seem unable to evaluate
between reliable and unreliable sources, and there is no way to appeal
the judgment of an editor, especially an editor who insists on
maintaining a page as it is. 

In a real encyclopedia, high-level experts such as Don debate issues at
an advisory level with deeper engagement in the field of their specific
expertise. They do not edit or write. Subject expert editors supervise
articles by subject expert authors. Experts may therefore be quite
narrow and contribute one article or perhaps a few dozen. 

In Wikipedia, one rises in the status system based on the number of
contribution and edits one has made. It’s not unlike a multi-player
dungeons-and-dragons type game. As a result, Wikipedia is controlled by
amateurs who believe that their subject expertise is greater than it may
actually be. They expand the range and scope of their involvement by
tweaking articles in an opinionated way. Often, these changes have
nothing to do with the reliability of the information they amend – but
rather their view of how well an author follows Wikipedia rules or
adheres to Wikipedia culture. The most passionate contributors to
Wikipedia do the most work and therefore the most damage.

Many Wikipedia articles on expert topics are what is known as a stub,
an incomplete article that would benefit from improvement. These are
followed by a standard Wikipedia plea to improve the article. 

In my view, much of Wikipedia will remain is stub state. The people who
might improve a stub or correct an inaccurate article with facts and
research have no reason to do so. I improved a couple of stubs based on
facts and responsible secondary sources, only to find myself tangled in
the kinds of difficulties that Messer-Kruse experienced. After several
weeks of explaining the issues, the sources, and the contributions, I
gave up. In the long run, it seems to me that Wikipedia has an in-built
systemic flaw and a culture so passionately organized around that flaw
that correcting the systemic problem would damage the culture that makes
Wikipedia work, driving its passionate but ignorant editors away. 

The Wikipedia problem resembles the problem of the medieval university
or the guild system. These systems were designed to accumulate,
preserve, and transfer information. Over long periods, often centuries,
they achieved growth in knowledge and improvements to knowledge.
Nevertheless, the pace was far too slow and nearly as likely to yield
bad information based on shared ignorance as improved information based
on research. There is a reason that modern universities made so much
progress following the German Humboldt reforms of the early 1800s.
Unlike Prussia, however, Wikipedia has no minister for education and no
structure to permit reforms. It is designed for group thinking and the
slow kind of biological evolution that leads to more extinctions than
successful developments. My guess is that the American Psychological
Association will fail in the effort to improve a reference work
controlled by passionate, ignorant amateurs.

Thanks, Lubomir, for sharing this article.

  http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3 9214 6078 |
Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design



Don Norman wrote:

—snip—

EB relies on the voice of authority. It has excellent subject matter
editors as full-time employees who select world-authorities on each
topic to be considered. These people are given a lot of leeway in how
the write their articles. They are also paid for their services.

The editor reviews the articles in the traditional manner of academic
publishing …

—snip—

The American Psychological Association has an extensive recruiting
program to get authorities to write and edit Wikipedia articles. We will
see how well that stands up to their rules: uninformed people who know
little or nothing of the topic, enforcing silly, but well-intentioned
rules.

—snip—

--

Fil Salustri wrote:

—snip—

I’d like to ask a question out of complete ignorance: How is “undue
weight” treated in encyclopedias of a more conventional nature? That
is, would the same thing have happened in, say, a similar article
published in E. Britannica?

—snip—