"The free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit," as of today is has nearly 3.9 million articles in the English language. Every single one of those articles is the result of a collaboration between dozens (and, over the course of many years, perhaps thousands) of complete strangers. Apart from the occasional troll or vandal, all of these users had one goal: to add value to the article. In this case, "add value" means to make the article verifiably accurate.
Trolls, and Morons and Vandals (oh my!)
The Most fascinating aspect of Wikipedia is the ability of its users to immediately identify suspect information, and remove clearly incorrect (or inflammatory) additions.
One of Wikipedia's oldest and most common "problems" is that "well, since anyone can edit it, it might be wrong!" However, even without Wikipedia's own strict rules, contributors would happily contribute only information that they knew (and could prove) was correct.
Contributors are encouraged to submit sources for their information, and exercise cautious editing judgement in case the source itself is mistaken. When many users discover and summarise many sources, and contribute them to the article, the article becomes more complete and more accurate, and will even inevitably contain a section or two on non-mainstream interpretations of the information presented, or counter arguments from prominent proponents and opponents.
Success of Wikipedia (or: Take that, Britannica!)
In 2005, the journal Nature published an article that showed that Wikipedia was only slightly more error-prone than the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and that it contains around the same rate of "serious errors". This is, certainly, a vindication of the method: allowing users to add value to your website. By referencing sources, and triple checking each others additions, the articles become accurate and comprehensive. When you also add the fact that a web based encyclopaedia has no physical size limitation (as is the case with a traditional encyclopaedia), and is completely free to access (in this case thanks to donations) then Wikipedia must, in fact, be counted as superior to the traditional encyclopaedia.
I think the wikipedia vs britannica is a classic case of our topic this week. Wikipedia maximized its results by utilizing the simple methods of harnessing collective intelligence. WIkipedia continually implement new mechanisms to review the accuracy of articles involving people from different demographics. Hence, extracting collective expertise.
ReplyDeleteThank you Jack for a good read. I agree with you about Wikipedia interms of its content being updated constantly. What sometimes worry me about Wikipedia though is, when false information is left unedited for quite a while it can be misleading. But again, that is what (as you have highlighted) errors are noted and corrected. Hence, harnessing collective intelligence. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe issue of errors being left uncorrected for too long is a problem that the traditional encyclopedia must also face, but in the case of a traditional encyclopedia the error may not be corrected until the next edition (perhaps some years away), even if the error is spotted immediately after publication. In this respect, Wikipedia has the upper hand, since any error that is spotted immediately can also be corrected immediately.
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