I initially posted this as a comment, following up to a comment by “Y456two” on Wikipedia Woes, but here it is as its own entry, because, well, it is rather long.
This portrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what Wikipedia is. Adding editors amounts to turning Wikipedia into the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Why would you want to do that? Don’t we already have an Encyclopedia Brittanica?
No– it represents the fundamental gap that separates what Wikipedia is from what it seeks to become. A user driven Wikipedia edited by panels of subject experts in various fields will be both more comprehensive AND more authoritative than a traditional encyclopedia.
If you believe that the masses are not smart enough to make their own judgements about the veracity of what they read, then, yes, absolutely, we should have a heavily regulated Internet, publishing industry, and media (sounds like China, don’t it?)
I do think that heavy internet users and information professionals over-estimate the information literacy of the average internet user, but private editorial control on a private web site is a long way from state regulation. Why do we trust articles in the NY Times more than the Washington Times or the West Podunk Pioneer Press? A reputation for accuracy and veracity. Why would one prefer to buy from a seller on eBay with a +300 feedback rating than one with no feedback rating? A reputation for being an honest dealer.
What do we know about the authors of a wikipedia entry? Why is it authoritative? We only know that wikipedia as a whole is generally accurate. But because each article is written by a different group of authors, researchers do not have an easy way of figuring out which articles are accurate and which contain blatant falsehoods or smaller inaccuracies.
Adding a series of editorial boards comprised of acknowledged experts in various fields to monitor wikipedia entries will go a long way towards increasing the accuracy and trustworthiness of wikipedia as a whole. And it is possible to do this without becoming a Britannica clone– in fact, doing so would take advantage of the same internet and collaborative technologies and processes that make wikipedia possible. It just happens to also acknowledge the fact (and, yes, it is a fact) that some people simply have more knowledge and experience in various subject matters than others. In the wikipedia model, these boards would not be simply appointed from the get-go, but could be composed of flexible memberships, with new members joining either by distinguished work in academia or business as well as by distinguished contributions to wikipedia itself.
At the very least, Wikipedia could post a list of the contributors who wrote or edited each article. This would make it possible for researchers to find out more about the authors of each individual article and make an educated decision whether to trust the accuracy of the wikipedia article.
I could say that the ‘blogosphere’ needs editors. I could claim that the problem with blogs is that there isn’t some credentialed editor who controls what is posted.
Unlike Wikipedia, the “blogosphere” is not a single entity. Individual blogs have attributes that establish their reputation for accuracy and veracity. For example, you can read my biographical information and see that my posts carry less intellectual heft than those of Prof. Goldman, for example. Unlike the millions of individual blogs posted by named or pseudonymous authors, Wikipedia presents itself as a centralized authority and strips away many of the signs that make it possible for an individual researcher to decide whether a single article is reliable. We can’t look to the author’s biography. We can’t judge the publisher’s credibility, because this publisher will post anything. We can’t look at the professionalism of the page design. The Wikipedia brand takes credibility from articles that justifiably grant credibility and it also lends credibility to articles that are not worthy of it.
The problem with Wikipedia is that it lends its brand to anyone. In the trademark context, a trademark owner who nakedly licenses a mark to anyone without keeping track of the quality of goods sold under that mark may lose the right to defend the mark. Since a trademark is meant to protect consumers and indicate the source of a good or service, nakedly licensing the mark strips away value from the mark. By allowing anyone and everybody to edit entries on wikipedia, wikipedia may squander any credibility it has attained.
As for Eric Goldman, I suppose he would be surprised to know that Usenet continues to thrive and be useful to millions of users every day.
I would challenge the idea that Usenet continues to thrive. I have yet to even load a Usenet news reader on my Powerbook, which means that I haven’t delved into that thriving medium in at least nine months and haven’t missed it a bit. People may still use newsgroups, but they have long since ceased to be relevant. How many average internet users can recognize that “alt.nerd.obsessive” denotes a newsgroup?
Here is the heart of the issue: do we trust people?
We trust people to the extent that the people have as full information as possible to make decisions. As another analogy, this is the driving principle behind securities law– we have a policy bias towards requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose information– because this allows investors to make informed decisions. The more that identifying information is witheld, the less reason we have to trust
