FACT OR FICITON?

The Economist
March 10 2007

Wikipedia’s wide variety of contributors is both a strength and a
weakness of the online encyclopedia

The idea of an encyclopedia-a compendium of all the best available
knowledge-is as tempting as it is flawed. Truth does not always come
in bite-sized chunks. And the notion of an infinitely elastic internet
encyclopedia, always up to date and distilling the collective wisdom of
the wired is even more tempting. When open to all comers, anonymously,
the problems are even more glaring.

This week a senior Wikipedia editor, who used the pseudonym Essjay,
turned out not to be a professor of religious studies as he claimed,
but in fact a 24-year-old college drop-out. That has highlighted
both the strengths and the failings of the world’s biggest online
encyclopedia, which now boasts well over 1.5m articles. The
"Encyclopedia Britannica", by contrast, has a mere 120,000.

Essjay (or Ryan Jordan in real life), got away with his pretence
because Wikipedians jealously preserve their anonymity. With most
entries, anyone can edit without even logging in; or they can create
an entirely fictitious online identity before doing so. The effect
is rather like an online role-playing game. Indeed, it is easy
to imagine some sad fellow spending the morning pretending to be a
polyglot professor on Wikipedia, and then becoming a buxom red-head on
"Second Life", a virtual online world, in the afternoon.

That anonymity creates a phoney equality, which puts cranks and
experts on the same footing. The same egalitarian approach starts
off by regarding all sources as equal, regardless of merit. If a
peer-reviewed journal says one thing and a non-specialist newspaper
report another, the Wikipedia entry is likely solemnly to cite them
both, saying that the truth is disputed. If the cranky believe the
latter and the experts the former, the result will be wearisome online
editing wars before something approaching the academic mainstream
consensus gains the weight it should.

Wikipedia has strengths too, chiefly the resilient power of
collective common sense. It benefits from the volunteer efforts of
many thousands of outside contributors and editors. If one drops out,
another fills his place. People are vigilant on issues that interest
them. When mistakes happen, they are usually resolved quickly. This
correspondent’s modest Wikipedia entry was edited this week by
an anonymous contributor who posted a series of entertaining but
defamatory remarks; a mere four minutes later, another user had
removed them.

Constant scrutiny and editing means even the worst articles are
gradually getting better, while the best ones are kept nicely polished
and up to date. Someone, eventually, will spot even the tiniest error,
or tighten a patch of sloppy prose. Mr Jordan, for all his bragging,
seems to have been a scrupulous and effective editor.

The most tiresome contributors do get banned eventually, though they
can always log in under a new identity. Other shortcomings are the
subject of earnest internal debate too, such as Wikipedia’s inherent
bias towards trivial recent events rather than important historical
ones. That is already changing, slowly, though subjects of interest
to northern white computer-literate males are over-covered, while
others are laughably neglected.

Wikipedia is the biggest collaborative online encyclopedia, but
not the only one. Citizendium, supposedly launching soon, aims to
be like Wikipedia but without anonymity, and with more weight given
to recognised experts. Conservapedia aims to offer a version of the
truth untainted by Wikipedia’s liberal secular bias on issues such
as evolution.

So how useful is Wikipedia? Entries on uncontentious issues-logarithms,
for example-are often admirable. The quality of writing is often
a good guide to an entry’s usefulness: inelegant or ranting prose
usually reflects muddled thoughts and incomplete information. A
regular user soon gets a feel for what to trust.

Those on contentious issues are useful in a different way. The
information may be only roughly balanced. But the furiously contested
entries on, say, "Armenian genocide" or "Scientology", and their
attached discussion pages, do give the reader an useful idea about
the contours of the arguments, and the conflicting sources and
approaches. In short: it would be unwise to rely on Wikipedia as the
final word, but it can be an excellent jumping off point.