Ex-Britannica Editor Reviews Wikipedia 869
0-9a-f writes "Robert McHenry, one-time Editor in Chief of Encyclopædia Britannica, offers his thoughts on Wikipedia at Tech Central Station. While many Wikipedia zealots might discount his obvious bias outright, his broad argument is difficult to ignore. A million monkeys might eventually write Shakespeare, but how would they recognise it once they had?"
He's got some great points (Score:5, Interesting)
This is perhaps the most compelling point made in the article, to me. Of course, the cynic's read into that statement is that Wikipedia will never get to the truth (see Asymptote [wikipedia.org]). In some ways though, that's really a pretty undeniable truth about the Wikipedia system -- even if it is True today, some jackass can come in and make it Not True tomorrow. Even if it's Not True for only five minutes, if someone looks at it during that time and assumes it to be correct, the wiki has failed in some sense.
Don't get me wrong, I really love Wikipedia, but I think some of the points raised a very much deserving of further discussion -- if you can make a crofty old coot like this guy happy, it's probably going to be a pretty damn good [encylo|wiki]pedia.
Maybe when a theatre company performed it? (Score:3, Interesting)
The monkeys can measure Wikipedia's success by how often it's cited in academic papers and used in classrooms. This is an indirect system of peer review by millions of content experts on the specific topics they are researching.
It's similar to Big Media and fact checking. If your CBS and throw out questionable evidence, there is an army of people with the time, motivation, and voice to prove you wrong.
I don't care if the editor is at CBS or Britannica, holding up to peer review is a more reliable test.
Re:Evolve, Sir. (Score:5, Interesting)
His argument is that the editing process fails to achieve a decent encyclopedia, and the article on Hamilton - which, he claims, has been edited repeatedly and now appears worse off than when it started - is an example of that. And his question is, how do you know when Wikipedia is authoritative? Just telling him to "edit it himself" is missing the point. I don't have the knowledge or time to write my own encyclopedia. At some point, the product has to become useful to the reader, as well as enjoyable for the contributors. Thus, your point that "Wikipedia thinking requires more depth" counts against Wikipedia, not for it.
Maybe there are valid counterarguments to this guy's point of view - I've used Wikipedia and been, subjectively, satisfied with it - but yours is not one.
Re:Evolve, Sir. (Score:5, Interesting)
To put the Wikipedia method in its simplest terms:
1. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can submit an article and it will be published.
2. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can edit that article, and the modifications will stand until further modified.
Then comes the crucial and entirely faith-based step:
3. Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy.
Points 1 and are essentially correct. Point 3 is the interesting one. One the face of it he is right again - sure contentious articles will go into dispute, but hum-drum articles on little-known issues? A typo or date inaccuracy could remain there for a very long time.
Of course similar errors could exist with a conventional encyclopedia - but I would be interested in refutations of his point 3.
FWIW, I love Wikipedia. It is an amazing resource and deserves to thrive, but if it can e made more robust, while retaining its essential open, collaborative nature, so much the better.
Re:What one's looking for... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it possible for me to date my wikipedia references in the same way? Particularly when the articles *are* likely to change often, and the review process before publication ('changes are visible immediately' comes up when I have a go at editing) is just not there.
For finding out about stuff wikipedia is fine - but I would prefer to quote something which has been published and can be got at 10 years later for review.
Re:Credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
After all, for a long time (and even still), one argument against Linux is that it isn't backed by leading institutions with impeccable credtials; it's written by the groundlines. (This is why you still see people confusing "Red Hat" with "Linux", since they don't understand that something succesful couldn't come from something that's not monolithic.)
Yet, despite not having the credentials, it's still become popular. Why? Because it works. Track record.
Wikipedia doesn't need credentials, it just needs to show that it's working.
I will grant you that approval and endorsement (though not necessarily support) by leading educational institutions would be a good indication of positive track record, however.
-Rob
I'm afraid he's right (Score:0, Interesting)
You know what? "Azerbaijan" is listed in the "Countries in Europe" template (which goes down at the bottom of articles about European countries). Wikipedia has been up for several years now, yet the process is so flawed that Azerbaijan, a country not in Europe in any way either geographically, culturally or religiously, is still sitting in the Countries in Europe template (which several legitimate European countries are omitted). Hopeless. Utterly hopeless. From my experience with Wikipedia, if you tried to remove Azerbaijan from the list, you'd be outnumbered by a heap of American editors (who wouldn't even know what langauge is spoken in Azerbaijan) trying to reverse your 'vandalism'. There are just numerically too many people on Wikipedia who don't know what they're talking about.
Re:My Favourite (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen it cited on Aljazeera such as here [aljazeera.net].
Re:Credibility (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What one's looking for... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:My Favourite (Score:3, Interesting)
I study computer science at the university level, by the by.
Out of date? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that information becomes dated very fast. Encyclopedias are useless for researching anything technology related, except as a historical snapshot. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union, new countries were springing into existance faster than the maps could be printed. Revolutions happen, presidents change and information that was once 100% correct becomes stale or downright wrong as new things are discovered. (How much more have we learned about Mars in the past year?) Despite the problems, online encyclopedias are still the way to go, and I would value Wikipedia as a reference far more than the beautiful leather bound dead tree editions.
My parents have a 1930's vintage encyclopedia set that they picked up in a garage sale once. It is quite facinating to go through and read a snapshot of what was known and believed to be true at the time.
The Oort Cloud Test (Score:4, Interesting)
Britannica Article [britannica.com]
Wiki Article [wikipedia.org]
As you can see there is a major difference in the way the theory is presented. Britannica as science fact and Wiki as theory.
Wikipedia is to Britannica as (Score:2, Interesting)
'nough said.
Re:Credibility (Score:2, Interesting)
Wikipedia doesn't work well as a replacement for traditional encyclopedias, or even as an addition to them. Wikipedia's collaborative nature makes it useful in entirely different ways than a traditional encyclopedia. It can cover topics that haven't made it into the traditional encyclopedia, but that are still important enough to someone to contribute. Its update history gives the reader a diary of the changing views and scholarship on a subject.
In other words, traditional encyclopedias are good for telling us what topics have become important to society, and the truth about them as we know it. Wikipedia is good for telling us what topics are becoming important to us, and recording how what we know about those topics has changed.
If you're looking for an "authoritative," "credible," or "authorized" source of information don't look to Wikipedia. But if you're looking for a readout on people's current mindset, and a record of their changing views and knowledge, I think it's an excellent tool.
Wikipedia is superior for physics and mathematics (Score:4, Interesting)
Thumbs up to the guys at Wikipedia and to those who have contributed articles on mathematics and physics.
Re:Evolve, Sir. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that the poster has an undue faith in the philosophy of the Wikipeadea as opposed to its reality. An interesting but fraught analogy would be Marx's ideas about Socialism versus the real-world implementation of them. Such noble purposes ruined by mere human frailty.
McHenry's point is that despite the excellent ideals behind Wikipedia, which would seem self-evidently true to those of us inclined to believe "in faith" the potentiality of community-based-development, the reality is that in the area of research and writing an encyclopedea (as opposed to software) that:
- Many people are essentially lazy. Many might come upon an article that is incomplete or poorly written but for many reasons will not take the time to correct it even if they are qualified to do so.
- Many people are essentially arrogant. Many might come upon an article that is incomplete or poorly written and will take the time to correct it even if they are notqualified to do so either in subject knowledge or language use.
- Many people are essentially stupid. Many might come upon an article that is incomplete or poorly written and not know the difference.
- Some people (especially adolecents) are cruel and destructive and will muck up perfectly good articles just because they can.
Thus, the maintainers (bureaucrats?) are at a bit of a disadvantage as they have a constantly moving target.A modest proposal then. Why not have a "perfect" flag for articles? This flag would indicate that in the opinion of a certain number of maintainers (or heaven forbit, subject matter experts) the article in question is a close to perfect as possible. The article would then be locked for editing and it would require a special appeal to the bureaucrats to reopen it to change it; for the addition of newly brought to light information, for example.
In this way the bureaucrats can concentrate on the areas that need continuing work without having to continuously go over settled articles. But the community can still bubble up new information and content for existing articles, but in a more controlled manner. Just a thought. I'm certain I'm not the first to bring it up as it seems perfectly obvious.
Oh, and lastly the poster needs to get over the whole "the Internet will save us/print people are dinos who don't get it" attitude. McHenry made a living managing the process of updating an encyclopedia. Just because he did it in a for-profit environment in a medium where cost made revisions an annual event, does not mean he doesn't have insight into the area of maintaining an open encyclopedia in digital form. Don't kill the messenger.
Wikipedia is great even for non-encyclopedia users (Score:4, Interesting)
I also wouldn't trust it not to gloss over important aspects of topics and to create the impression that a relatively unimportant aspect of a topic was more important than it really was by going into too much detail over it.
I could say the same for Wikipedia. Except that I haven't cracked open an encyclopedia in years whereas I use Wikipedia three or four times a week to look up a fact. Most of the time I don't go directly to the site, but search for the topic using google, and then click on the link to a wikipedia article that will show up. I know the link is worth clicking if it comes from wikipedia or one of the advertising supported 'mirrors'. I don't even mind the ads since I mostly browse with lynx anyway.
But I wouldn't feel super confident that what I read in a wikipedia article was the complete and total truth ( though most of the time it comes close ) until I had at least checked out a few other sources.
Sometimes, I used to start at the 'top level' of a subject in wikipedia that I wanted to learn about, and then click the links, going into as much depth as I felt like by clicking ever-deeper. The text was structured as an article, and the subjects that were links were in context. I loved this because it made learning about a subject in general easy. Now that wikipedia seems to have reorganised it's top levels by deleting the well written and informative top level articles and replacing them with information-barren alphabetic indexes, that sort of learning is not as easy, though it can still be done once you go a little deeper into the articles.
In my opinion, the alphabetic indexes should have been added to, wikipedia, but not replaced the top level articles which put the subtopics so nicely in context.
Re:Evolve, Sir. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikkipedia is NOT an encyclopedia (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a sifting of global consciousness on a certain level.
What does the average computer user think about, 'X'? You can get a pretty good idea with Wikkipedia. Then, because it's the internet and EVERYBODY should by now recognize that when doing research on the web, one needs to read a bunch of different websites on the same data they're exploring, research the owners of the website to see what their inborn bias is and what other things they have done, and then do a bunch of creative cross-referencing work. For some subjects, it provides and excellent starting point, but in the end, further research should always include more and wider explorations. The same must be said of any body of reference material, including Britannica.
And, of course, if you need the orthodox viewpoint written from Official Culture, spun to the tune of "Nothing to see here, citizen", then by all means, look up Britannica. (I particularly liked the difference between the two definitions for the word "Orthodox"; Note particularly, the first sentence on each; Wikki gives us an actual definition, whereas Britannica starts out by immediately telling us that Orthodox means, "True". The irony is downright chewable.)
"Orthodox"
"Chemtrail"
-FL
Don't cite Wikipedia? U.S. Courts do. (Score:3, Interesting)
(Now, granted, it's fair game to make fun of him for his spelling of encyclypedia.)
Re:Evolve, Sir. (Score:3, Interesting)
It can also be instantly "uncorrected" as was the case with the Hamilton article. The original was more "correct" than the current form: which had evolved into an inferior state.
The problem is that there are too many uninformed monkeys and too few experts AND that equal weight is given to each.
You've heard the expression "a little knowledge is dangerous" ? The reason for the danger is that those with a little knowledge don't know enough to know how little they know. Ditto with wikki: the vast majority of people editing simply don't know how poor their knowledge actually is.
In addition a significant number of people will be editing not because they think they can improve the article but simply to make their mark: the most extreme form of which is deliberate vandalism.
I'm sure my fellow slashdotters would have problem agreeing that the most recent Star Wars movies could have been improved by the attention of an expert editor: the same is true of the wikipaedia.
Where's the logic? (Score:2, Interesting)
After all, which articles do people tend to look up more? Those for which they are experts and know most of the stuff anyway, or those from which they hope to get information on something that they may have no previous clue about? I would argue that for any given article, most of the people who could make a useful contribution won't read it and most of the people who read it can't make a useful contribution. The author's observation that the quality of an article has degraded since the original publication then seems obvious and inevitable to me. So... how can Wikipedia ever reach high quality?
Why things get edited from right to wrong. (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that people who know almost nothing about subjects, tend to think they are experts. And sadly, the experts -- knowing the limits of their knowledge -- tend to not consider themselves expert.
If you happen to think you know a lot about something (anything), you really should read this study: http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html [apa.org].
It probably applies to you. It certainly does apply to the people writing and "correcting" Wiki articles.
Re:The Oort Cloud Test (Score:2, Interesting)
all these words from the encyclopedia brittanica synopsis would lead any discerning reader to the conclusion that the Oort Cloud is, as you say, a theoretical source of comets.
Re:It not biased to be Educated (Score:3, Interesting)
Where in the Encyclopedia Britannica are you going to see the same sort of warning? I guess we don't need one, because Britannica is perfect [mymac.com]. It's not like they would ever edit their articles to avoid harming the reputation of some powerful group [infidels.org].
All "knowledge" comes with the explicit and implicit biases of the author, the editor, and whatever else enters into the process of bringing facts to a reader. Wikipedia is superior to traditional encyclopediae precisely because the process is open and the readers cannot help but be aware of the opportunity for fraud and bias.
Different - NOT Better. (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The assumption that the writing of a professional encyclopedia writer is more 'truthful' than that of neophytes. No one has a monopoly on the truth - and assuming the 'professionals' are less likely to be biased is horse pucky.
2. The assumption that one sample article will tell you the over-all value of the Wikipedia. After he extolls the virtues of the scientific method, he then uses an example that is statistically meaningless.
The reality is every form of media is subject to inaccuracy for several reasons:
a) The information was recorded incorrectly to begin with.
b) The writer and/or source of the information has an agenda which misrepresenting the facts serves.
c) Typographical errors.
This will always be the case. The only way to know 'for sure' is to either witness the event first hand (and even that is subject to perceptual anamolies) or use many different sources and determine if they agree on the issue at hand. Even then, you have to trust that they all got it right. It is possible they didn't.
When all is said and done there is not much difference between professional media and that produced by volunteers. The key difference is money, and the fact that a large internet operation of volunteers is more likely to come across people with more than a passing interest in the subjects. Additionally, while the quality of the writing may vary, you can certainly be sure of getting a large number of points of view - much more interesting in many contexts IMHO.
I don't know about you, but I grew up being fed what I was 'supposed' to know and think from the media most of my life. Having the vast resources of the internet is a balance against abuses of the mainstream media.
Re:Evolve, Sir. (Score:2, Interesting)
The article raises some very good points about the reliability of the data in the Wikipedia. However, the implication is that print encyclopedia are more accurate. In many cases, they may be, but I have encountered encyclopedia that were horrifically wrong. The difference is that I could do nothing about it.
It should be noted that one should NEVER just take the word of one source as fact. If there is only one source available, then the information should be treated as non-corroborated, no matter the source.
Re:Shakesphere WAS a million monkeys (Score:4, Interesting)
The point is that you and the Britannica editor are, sadly, both correct. The Britannica editor spoke of regression toward the mean and a trend toward medicority. You state that the vast majority of papers tend to get better over time: true, but this is true beause the vast majority of articles start off worse than mediocre. This is not surprising: understanding a subject well and writing well are two orthoganal skills sets that must both be present to write an article better than mediocre. Most people miss the mark on at least one skill set.
It's like PowerPoint. PowerPoint templates have mostly eliminated the real dregs of presentations: I never go to a conference nowadays and and see pages of illegible handwritten text on cloudy transparancies. But, as Edward Tufte argues, PowerPoint has also wiped out the high end: presentations all have a terrible sameness: a title page followed by an endless parade of bullet points.
If Wikipedia can not escape its regression toward medocrity, it will become of use, certainly, but it will not reach the stellar heights of its advocates' ambition.
I'd say that is a point *for* Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
Wikipedia, when it is at its best, is similar. It will never reach the Truth, however, as people contribute to it, it will hopefully approach it. Information that is not useful (because it conflicts too grossly with other "models of the Truth" out there) will be removed, and information that is useful (help the users) will be added.
The Britannica author comes from another tradition. A tradition where Truth is based on authority rather than consensus. The ultimate Truth is God, and is expressed through the hierarchy of the Church down to the common churchgoer. Lately, the Church has been supplemented by Science. This gives the common layman view of Science as a Truth, competing or supplementing the Church. Scientists, of course, know that is not so, but the whole dissemination system (schools) has not been updated yet. It uses the old Church based mechanisms. When scientists teach, they try to teach pupils to think. They don't just pass knowledge given from above.
Much of the Britannica authors ruminations about the degeneration of modern society stems from the same source. Focus is shifting towards the process, and old barriers are removed. Teaching methods is (slowly) catching up. The world is changing, and the best you can teach your pupils is how to adapt to the change. He does not understand that. What was once the Truth, will always be the Truth. That is the nature of Truth. He complains that Wikipedia does not consider the reader, only the authors. This is because the Wikipedians don't use the same model of the world he does. There are no separation between authors and readers, both are users and contributors to the system. The Truth may stay the same, but how we see it will change. It has always changed, but it changes faster now. Being able to change with it is a competitive advantage.
Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica (Score:5, Interesting)
Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica which have been corrected in Wikipedia [wikimedia.org]
Re:The democratization of ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
Continental drift is a good case study, I think. It wasn't accepted until a plausible cause (plate techtonics) was identified. It took a long time, but the process worked well.
How many versions till famed 11th? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's give Wikipedia a few decades, internet-style, to right itself, and by then let's see who's besting who. I'll bet at some point Wikipedia crosses some line in the sand where it makes economic sense to have moderators involved, and to help it better link-match more professional source materials.
Errors in Britannica: the other side (Score:4, Interesting)
For some examples from the other side, see:
Errors in Britannica which have been corrected in Wikipedia [wikimedia.org]
EB's McHenry fails to convince. (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't know what most readers would do with EB if they were given the freedom to change and distribute it because they are not given that freedom. Even McHenry concedes that the Wikipedia claim is true--they were able to get a lot of volunteers to edit and revise. He must say this because he tries to use it to justify a poor review of Wikipedia later on. This freedom to make copies, change the work, and distribute copies (verbatim or modified) is one of the issues Wikipedia takes up (the first in its list of values, in fact). This sense of freedom (not zero price) is apparently quite important for Wikipedia ("The license we use grants free access to our content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely." from Wikipedia:Copyrights [wikipedia.org]).
Taking the blame doesn't help anything if it doesn't result in getting problems fixed. EB's approach is about framing the debate in terms they are comfortable with an excluding others from building on their work. The practical outcome of this for me is that too many encyclopedias I've seen fail to address important social movements of the day (like the free software movement, encouraging an ethical approach to computer software, and the only significant challenge to one of the largest monopolies of our day--Microsoft's proprietary software), or they are updated too infrequently to talk about things I want to learn more about (like the recent goings-on and the history of the anti-war movement).
Other practical considerations are left out too: What if I want to make a copy of EB in case EB goes away? EB is under a restrictive license which doesn't allow me to do things I want to do. Contacting EB has not produced the kind of feedback I was looking for, including pointers to primary sources and essays written by people in the know on topics I care about. The end result of this is that I can't help myself by helping like-minded neighbors find these topics either.
To review Wikipedia, McHenry presents something closer to an all-or-nothing case ("assessing an encyclopedia...can't be done in any thoroughgoing way") where a complete reading is infeasible but clearly one must read something from the encyclopedia or else one can't say anything about its content. And then he says that he "chose a single article, the biography of Alexander Hamilton.". McHenry actively arguing against sampling--assessing the figurative lay of the land by looking at many places, not by looking at one hand-picked part and making that review stand for the rest.
But since he thinks this one-article approach is an appropriate yardstick, I figure two can play that game. I chose to look up something from the online EB about the free software movement and I found no entry (not even in the subscriber's short list). "GNU", in the context of computer software, seemed to elicit no response, neither did "open source" (which could have pointed to how the open source and free software movements differ [gnu.org]), but "GNU/Linux" provides a hit (only because of the word "Linux"). Unfortunately EB falls into a trap much like the reviewer cited for Wikipedia's Hamilton entry--he picked the Alexander Hamilton entry because he knew that Hamilton's birthdate was likely to be wrong (and thus set up bad dates for the remainder of the entry), and that is exactly what he found. In my setup to fail, I know that exactly what Linux is and how it ought to be credited is controversial. Yet EB goes on boldly claiming that Linux is an operating system (when actually it is only part of an operating system called a "kernel"), and EB seems to make no distinction between free as in price and free as in the freedoms to share and
Unspecified...process? Um, no. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the "highest degree of accuracy" is not 100% in practice, and never will be. The fact of the matter is that all refference works are subject to the limitations of the authors' knowledge. As many here have noted already, print encyclopaedias like Britannica are just as effected by bias, incomplete research, and the like. Indeed, print works like Britannica, being the product of academia, may be even more subject to the whims of the Zeitgeist. My mother has a set of World Book encyclopaedias (for youth) from 1957 - it is full of anti-communist propoganda. Mind you, I'm not pro-communist myself, but I don't believe in overstating the facts to get my point across, either. I've seen egregious errors in the Encyclopaedia Americana as well, many of which were linked to passing academic fads.
The nice thing about Wikipedia is that someone who sees a mistake, or an omission can correct it. Yes, one can introduce mistakes as well, but it's just like OSS: the number of people intent on fixing mistakes is likely to outnumber the number of people intent on introducing them. Is that faith-based to an extent? Yes, but getting information from Britannica is faith-based, too: one has faith in the Britannica name. Would you expect the same level of integrity from some "Bob's Discount Book of Stuff" that you bought at the supermarket? Of course not.
The lesson here is never to rely on a single source for refrence. Always read critically, looking for the slightest sign of bias or poor scholarship. Blind faith in any human work is foolish, and Britannica is far from Divine.