Is Wikipedia that mediocre?
Today Veronica sent me an article where Andrew Orlowski tries to establish a claim that Wikipedia is a temporal phenomenon doomed due to its mediocre quality. Most of the support to his claim he gains from the people running “Britannica” and my question – what would he expect? Would he expect them saying that this is a real threat to their business? Would they acknowledge that there is a potentially good enough source to make their product obsolete?
I haven’t conducted or read any research on Wikipedia (although it exists). Due to my skepticism, at the beginning I used occasionally to compare wiki entries with those of Britannica. Those usually turned to be correct and even richer + having context, which is usually not found in printed encyclopedias (try looking at the debates behind such ‘controversial’ topics as “terrorism” for example). Recently, I meet reference to Wikipedia in academic articles and just a few months ago, I heard a researcher from MIT referring to it as “the best information source these days”. Personally, I tend to use Wikipedia pretty often to get initial idea of new terms (particularly about food :).
Reading an article like this I am getting the same feeling I indicated in the previous post. It seems that there is something new and principally different emerging on the web and the older, established systems are refusing to accept this new ‘thing’. Just today at the research methods class I TA there was a discussion about science and the lecturer gave an example of Copernicus, whose ideas were rejected by the church. They were not rejected purely by some religious verdict. The church had its own scientists who proved he was wrong using the scientific tools/instruments of that period. The basic claim was that if we calculate the speed of the Earth, we are getting some 1750km/h – so, how come we do not feel it? The answer came only a few decades later with Galileo’s findings and today people treat this as obvious without even thinking of doubting it (which is not necessarily good).
Of course there is room to criticize Wikipedia, but maybe as a phenomenon, it is something the current paradigms did not learn yet to understand and/or explain? So the best tactic is to preserve the known and understandable? To feel safe? Do the encyclopedias the only owners of public knowledge?
I haven’t conducted or read any research on Wikipedia (although it exists). Due to my skepticism, at the beginning I used occasionally to compare wiki entries with those of Britannica. Those usually turned to be correct and even richer + having context, which is usually not found in printed encyclopedias (try looking at the debates behind such ‘controversial’ topics as “terrorism” for example). Recently, I meet reference to Wikipedia in academic articles and just a few months ago, I heard a researcher from MIT referring to it as “the best information source these days”. Personally, I tend to use Wikipedia pretty often to get initial idea of new terms (particularly about food :).
Reading an article like this I am getting the same feeling I indicated in the previous post. It seems that there is something new and principally different emerging on the web and the older, established systems are refusing to accept this new ‘thing’. Just today at the research methods class I TA there was a discussion about science and the lecturer gave an example of Copernicus, whose ideas were rejected by the church. They were not rejected purely by some religious verdict. The church had its own scientists who proved he was wrong using the scientific tools/instruments of that period. The basic claim was that if we calculate the speed of the Earth, we are getting some 1750km/h – so, how come we do not feel it? The answer came only a few decades later with Galileo’s findings and today people treat this as obvious without even thinking of doubting it (which is not necessarily good).
Of course there is room to criticize Wikipedia, but maybe as a phenomenon, it is something the current paradigms did not learn yet to understand and/or explain? So the best tactic is to preserve the known and understandable? To feel safe? Do the encyclopedias the only owners of public knowledge?
P.S. Also there were a couple of phrases in the article that were very difficult to leave unnoticed. For example, after spending 5 hours yesterday and 3 hours today in the library, the Tom Panelas’s quote “People who use Wikipedia either wouldn't have done anything before - they didn't go to the library to get the information…” is really offensive. Also, at least the last part of Daan Strebe’s remark: “I think of it only as a reference lacking authority, like the rest of the Web” is quite a simplistic generalization given the number of reliable online sources and academic journals.
P.P.S. I couldn’t find who the people/organizations behind “The Register” are. Anyone can help?
1 comment:
Dare I say it - try the wikipedia article on The Register
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