When I was 12 my parents bought a second hand set of Encyclopedia Britannica and an unabridged dictionary. I think my mother had images of us sitting on the floor on summer evenings with the “F” Volume as we slowly worked our way from “A” to “Z”. I think she was a bit disappointed at the disinterest that we showed at the time. A leit-motif in my household growing up was “Why don’t you look it up?” whenever a question was asked. Sometimes we’d be just curious enough to do it.
I was twelve in 1993, the year before the World Wide Web took off. Now thirteen years later a new batch of twelve years are growing up but instead of large, heavy tomes the repository of knowledge in many households is probably the internet. Wikipedia was begun as “an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language.” However, it has routinely been criticized as being inaccurate, lacking in credibility, and in some cases sloppily written.
Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has proposed a project, Citizendium, that he thinks will be able to remedy the shortcomings of Wikipedia. Namely Citizendium will be a web community of experts who author or oversee articles in their area of expertise. On the blog Many 2 Many Clay Shirky critiques Sanger’s definition of experts as being too narrow, consisting only of those who are part of existing institutions. Furthermore, he argues that “ordinary” participants are not likely to work hand in hand with experts. People’s egos get tied up in the text that they produce. If one begins with the premise that a majority of the participation on Wikipedia is a result of the self satisfaction and ego boost that participants get from their contributions it does seem unlikely that the lay participants on Citizendium will want to defer to editors they have never seen or met but have been mysteriously validated as experts by the site. There is of course the potential that the goal of the site will lead to self selection of only those lay people willing to differ to expertise and be constantly overruled…but I’m not going to hold my breath. (Click here to read Larry Sangers rejoinder.)
Despite any inaccuracies or lack of credibility that currently plagues Wikipedia it serves a function and is not likely to shrivel up or go away simply because an alternative reference source is made available. I like Sorin’s description in class of Wikipedia as a knowledge swap meet. You may not expect to find anything of tremendous value but you might find something you can use. It’s the idea of “good enough” knowledge. Come to think of it, after a few years, all those Encyclopedia Britannica volumes written by experts had become good enough knowledge too.
I was twelve in 1993, the year before the World Wide Web took off. Now thirteen years later a new batch of twelve years are growing up but instead of large, heavy tomes the repository of knowledge in many households is probably the internet. Wikipedia was begun as “an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language.” However, it has routinely been criticized as being inaccurate, lacking in credibility, and in some cases sloppily written.
Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has proposed a project, Citizendium, that he thinks will be able to remedy the shortcomings of Wikipedia. Namely Citizendium will be a web community of experts who author or oversee articles in their area of expertise. On the blog Many 2 Many Clay Shirky critiques Sanger’s definition of experts as being too narrow, consisting only of those who are part of existing institutions. Furthermore, he argues that “ordinary” participants are not likely to work hand in hand with experts. People’s egos get tied up in the text that they produce. If one begins with the premise that a majority of the participation on Wikipedia is a result of the self satisfaction and ego boost that participants get from their contributions it does seem unlikely that the lay participants on Citizendium will want to defer to editors they have never seen or met but have been mysteriously validated as experts by the site. There is of course the potential that the goal of the site will lead to self selection of only those lay people willing to differ to expertise and be constantly overruled…but I’m not going to hold my breath. (Click here to read Larry Sangers rejoinder.)
Despite any inaccuracies or lack of credibility that currently plagues Wikipedia it serves a function and is not likely to shrivel up or go away simply because an alternative reference source is made available. I like Sorin’s description in class of Wikipedia as a knowledge swap meet. You may not expect to find anything of tremendous value but you might find something you can use. It’s the idea of “good enough” knowledge. Come to think of it, after a few years, all those Encyclopedia Britannica volumes written by experts had become good enough knowledge too.
