On October 31, 2011, by Sam H
Ahh Wikipedia. It’s hard to imagine life without immediate
access to understandable answers to the world’s toughest questions. Why is the
sky blue? Why
is grass green?
What
is the meaning of life?
(Warning: gratuitous Wikipedia links continue below)
Many of us depend on Wikipedia for all aspects of work and
play but, admittedly, it has its flaws. Still,
Wikipedia manages to be one of the most
visited sites year after year. What keeps us coming back? Is it an addiction
to an ever-growing content base and cordial user community? Perhaps a primal
urge to voraciously consume and produce knowledge?
Wikipedia Problems = First World Problems?
Are the problems of Wikipedia solvable? Many have been
greatly mitigated but have yet to dissapear. As you continue your Wikipedia
editing/using career, here are some issues to consider as the network grows.
10. Abuse and Vandalism in Articles
This slots in at 10 as the community controls and norms in
place continue to make this less of an issue. Still, if Stephen Colbert believes
in change on Wikipedia, it might just happen. Edit wars are
still fairly common and can get nasty. While most of the time, users do seem to
be acting in good
faith, it isn’t always the case.
As the user base continues to increase and people and
machines get better at monitoring and fixing abuse, the prospects continue to
brighten!
9. Censorship
Just because content isn’t centrally created and
distributed, doesn’t mean it can’t be blocked or
censored.
And if anyone can edit Wikipedia, the
government and private enterprise can edit Wikipedia. While censorship
across different types of content and distribution methods is certainly a
concern, the right to access factual information is becoming a more pervasive
human right. Because of the nature of Wikipedia’s content, any obscenity or
other censorship argument is weakened. Expect Wikipedia to remain at the
frontier of free information.
8. Neutrality
I know. I know. It’s better this way – presenting facts and
the facts of others’ viewpoints but I wish just once we could shake things up
and have an article that reads like the YDN editorial page. You
can be sure that Paul D. Keane.
M. Div ’80. M.A., M.Ed. PS would be very vocal on the discussion page and
trolls would abound.
The Neutrality standard, like Abuse and Vandalism above, has
continued to be upheld more effectively through norms, moderators, and
technological infrastructure. This is no easy task, especially in the case of
articles involving current events or controversial issues or both. Like Abuse,
this issue is unlikely to be wiped out completely, but its adverse effects are generally
felt minimally by Wikipedia users.
Controversial and current! (xkcd.com/545/)
7. Time Waster
Ok, maybe it isn’t as bad as StumbleUpon or Google Reader,
but Wikipedia can really eat up time. This is true for both editing and
reading; all those in-text
links are just so appealing. On the bright side, you can’t help
but feel like you’re learning something. It just isn’t always clear exactly what
you’re learning.
6. Not In Paperback
Call me old fashioned, but nothing gets me up in the morning
like the smell of leather bound books and rich mahogany. In spite of the efforts of
a brave few, it seems unlikely that Wikipedia will be in paperback any time
soon. Aside from the obvious factor of not looking like a stud/studette when
you pull the Aa-Ac book of encyclopedia brittanica of your knapsack, with
Wikipedia you can’t easily see what comes alphabetically before Aardvark!
Fortunately, there’s still the “open the book to a random page and
read game” for the 21st century. The benefits of having everything
dynamic and on the interwebs is that it can better keep up with our rapidly
developing knowledge base. Also, it’s free and available to way more people.
Plus it’s packed with way more information (from way more sources). Oh my! I’ll
take that tradeoff any day.
5. Incomplete
Have you ever been devastated to discover a mere stub article on
Wikipedia when beginning to write a paper? Or worse, “The Page Does Not Exist”
Search Result of Doom. In spite of the concerted efforts of many, the
impressive information trove of Wikipedia remains incomplete. As our
information gathering continue to outpace our information synthesis, this issue
is unlikely to end in the near future. However, that makes the fight even more
worthwhile. Similarly, arcane topics in Wikipedia can often be overlooked due
to lack of interest or lack of people knowledgeable on the subject. This can
create articles strongly influenced (and biased) by certain groups or no
article at all. I mean, who uses 29Si
NMR these days anyways?
4. Innacurate and Untrustworthy
I had to include this as these charges are often levelled at
Wikipedia. Fortunately, there is much evidence
to suggest high accuracy (roughly comparable to
the oft-praised encyclopedia brittanica in science matters). Of
course, certain newer articles or articles with less well-known topics
will be of lower quality but they likely aren’t even included in
encyclopedia brittanica. Should you need more convincing, I recommend the
people of yahoo
answers.
3. Free
Have you ever heard the expression “you get what you pay
for”? Wikipedia is free so might it not be very good? There’s no
advertising and no fee-per-use/subscription fee (Spotify?).
Too good to be true? There must be a catch you say? I got it! They want you to
contribute money and/or time (voluntarily). That doesn’t sound too bad actually
(at
least to me). Well done, Jimmy, Well done. But still, be a conscientious
consumer of the information you get on Wikipedia. Not everything on the
internet is true.
2. Formatting
There’s definitely something reassuring about the same
format, color scheme, and everything on Wikipedia, but sometimes you just want
something new and eyecatching. Sure, there are skins and other
websites you could be browsing, but why not be exciting like
facebook and change your features and layout every two days? It seems to be
working for them.
I guess for now we’ll have to live with the search box on wikipedia boringly
and predictably sitting in the upper right hand corner of the screen and take the changes we can get.
1. Research Papers
What’s the first step of starting an essay? If you answered
D) search the topic on Wikipedia, you fall into an ever-growing category of
people/college students. Somehow, it still isn’t okay to cite Wikipedia.
I guess we should go and check the information in the original source, but then
does that count as original research? Moral, legal and ethical dilemmas are
everywhere! Not to mention, why should I write a brand-new reasearch essay on
Abraham Lincoln when there’s already a good one here? Wouldn’t it be
better if I improved that one or used that as a starting
point?
We’re unlikely to see citing Wikipedia as your main source
of information become academically acceptable any time soon. That doesn’t mean
it isn’t helpful – it sets up an outline for you to better understand the topic.
In conclusion,it looks like EasyBib will
be around for at least a few more years and college students everywhere will be
forced to research beyond Wikipedia.
Wikipedia and You
In spite of all these grievances, don’t forget one thing!
Wikipedia is, in fact, the best thing ever.
It makes lives better, easier, and more interesting and demonstrates the
immense power of a norm enforced collaborative network of people with
common values. So go have fun and
make the world a better
place!
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