Text is not Dead

Wikipedia, like Google, thrives on it’s accessibility and convenience. Just like food that’s unhealthy, people eat it because it’s easy, less expensive (in the case of Wikipedia-free), and everywhere. To eat a healthy diet, a person has to know that special section of the grocery store, the brands that actually are healthy versus the ones that claim to be, and be willing to spend the extra money on vegetables and lean meats. I promise that the metaphor is over and that I had a point in making it.

As a source, Wikipedia is easy, so easy to search, use, and read. As a format to contribute to, I find it less so, but that’s a whole other post. A flaw that everyone seems to be aware of but bothers few is its check and balance system (or lack there of), the existence of bias (or even defamatory) entries, and the fact that the readers are the writers. Before Wikipedia, people relied of Webster’s Dictionary, Encyclopedia Britanica, etc. No one would have bought the Encyclopedia of Kasey or Shoemaker’s Thesaurus (except maybe my mother.) The source of information was required to me more reliable, even infallible, and the standard came from the users of the source. The weakness in Wikipedia is the same as its strength. The standards are set by the users, and the content is only as reliable as the system can allow. An article on Physorg.com explains my point.

Traditional media impose a set of practices and institutions that enable consumers to evaluate the trustworthiness of information, says Nunberg. “When I walk into a library, I know everything was screened several times: by editors, publishers, librarians. I assume the writer was someone good enough to have been given a book contract.” The web eliminates those mechanisms, he says, and so “puts more of a burden on the user than the world of print.” Calling that problem a technological one overlooks its complexity, says Nunberg: “You have to have a sense of what’s out there on the web, who put it up, and why they put it up.”

Finding Dulcinia says it a bit more bluntly.

As Wikipedia can be edited by anyone with an Internet connection, it’s subject to changes by users who falsify entries. Wikipedia claims that peer reviewers quickly delete this “vandalism.” However, it’s been shown that for less researched topics, the false information can remain online for extended periods of time. When surfing Wikipedia, take the information you read with a grain of salt. It’s recommended to never cite Wikipedia in any academic work.

Even Wikipedia itself acknowledges, to some extent, its flaws.

Wikipedia acknowledges that it should not be used as a primary source for serious research.^[13] Librarian Philip Bradley stated in an October 2004 interview with The Guardian that the concept behind the site was a “lovely idea,” but, “practically, I wouldn’t use it; and I’m not aware of a single librarian who would. The main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window.”^[14] Robert McHenry and Paul Vallely similarly noted that readers of Wikipedia can not know who has written the article they are reading - it may or may not have been written by an expert.^[6]

The issues are not secret. The weakness is obvious. What’s the problem? It seems, to me at least, that no one cares. The internet and the entire notion of readily available information has created a general apathy for value and accuracy. When everyone is a contributor, the user has to make more effort to distinguish between the knowledgeable and inaccurate. And, the internet is not typically the place to ask users to make more of an effort than they have to in order to obtain information.