Wikipedia revisited.

THE JULY 2005 issue of ETC included an article titled "Wikipedia and the Disappearing Author" in which I discussed the free, open-content, reader-edited Internet encyclopedia known as Wikipedia.org. The site runs on the technology known as "wiki," which enables any visitor to a wiki site to edit, add to, and even delete the content of any page on the site. The phenomenon has spread to businesses, fraternal organizations, schools and even governments, mainly because it offers a low-cost way to share information and keep it up to date. Combined with the latest methods of communications, like RSS ("really simple syndication," which enables a visitor to subscribe to a page and receive automatic notification when the page is updated), organizational wikis have become an essential tool for both internal communications and customer support. Not surprisingly, Internet giants like Microsoft and Google have incorporated the technology into their corporate fabric, but smaller companies have found them an economical way to enhance customer service as well. "Blogs and wikis have moved past the flashy tech bling phase and are now settling in as core elements of the enterprise collaboration infrastructure" says Cathleen Moore, senior editor at Info World. (1)

So what's the latest news on Wikipedia.org, the tour de force that launched this new way of sharing responsibility for the content of an informational source? In the 18 months since my original article, Wikipedia has grown to become one of the most cited sources on the Internet, with more than 5 million entries. As the archetypal self-referential tool, Wikipedia offers pages with statistics on their own growth, and a guide on how to cite an article from Wikipedia in all the standard academic formats. In January, 2007, the New York Times noted that "more than 100 judicial rulings have relied on Wikipedia [since] 2004, including 13 from circuit courts of appeal, one step below the Supreme Court." (2)

In response to news that Microsoft paid a consultant to enter favorable postings about the company on Wikipedia, comedian Stephen Colbert hailed "the democratization of knowledge," where "definitions will greet us as liberators." (3) He followed that with a challenge:

    This is the essence of Wikilobbying. When money determines Wikipedia
    entries, reality has become a commodity.... I'll give five bucks to
    the first person who goes on [the site] and changes the entry on
    Reality to "Reality Has Become A Commodity." And to those who say
    "That's not what Reality is," I say "Go look it up on Wikipedia."

Colbert has a complicated relationship with the site, which has a lengthy article about his neologism "truthiness." He has gone so far as to coin another new word based on the Wikipedia philosophy of verifiability, not truth--"wikiality," a portmanteau of "Wikipedia" and "reality". His parody site, Wikiality.com, proclaims itself "the Truthiness Encyclopedia! No facts. No reality. No Spelcheck."

Wikipedia continues to struggle with its basic principles, defined in part by the site's community of authors and in part by the brains behind the project, founder Jimmy Wales. If you look up the Wikipedia article on Wales, you will find that even he has run afoul of the "conflict of interest" rule that prohibits authors from editing entries about themselves. Some contend that the rule serves to protect information from willful, self-serving embroidery. Others note that it has notoriously blocked the removal of disputed claims in the biographies of numerous celebrities (and some not so celebrated.) The site contains a page listing over 4000 claims of disputed information, noting that the list is growing at the rate of 125 claims per week. Most disputes quibble about some minute detail of an obscure article, but some have hit the headlines worldwide, such as when a Wikipedia article on John Siegenthaler, Sr. "erroneously linked the journalist and former Washington insider to a pair of assassinations." (4) The journalist's effort to remove the allegation took months, during which the false information propagated around the Internet, where it will remain long after Wikipedia's Wales finally intervened and manually removed it.

The site continues to represent the operational definition of conflicting goals. Wales cites a passionate belief in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and the "virtue of independence." This underlies his vision of Wikipedia as free content encyclopedia written by volunteers from around the world. In an interview with editors at the technology forum, Slashdot, he said, "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." (5) This sentiment is echoed by Wikipedia contributors, who see the site as the great leveler, which acknowledges and enables the social construction of knowledge:

    "Some knowledge is purely factual, but much is socially constructed
    and therefore inevitably prone to bias and dispute. Wikipedia's
    greatest innovation is arguably the framework it provides to mediate
    the social construction of knowledge, advocate for neutrality,
    accommodate dispute, and offer a path to its negotiated resolution."
    (6)

Unfortunately, with great freedom comes great responsibility. While supporting the goal of openness and verifiability, the username structure of the site provides complete anonymity for its editors and administrators, which renders the site constantly vulnerable to vandalism and fraud. In early March, 2007, we learned that one of the most prolific editors on Wikipedia, who has contributed extensively to more than 20,000 articles, misrepresented his qualifications in disputes over the content of some of his entries. As the New York Times notes, Editor "EssJay" claimed to be a tenured professor of religion:

    In a discussion over the editing of the article with regard to the
    term "imprimatur," as used in Catholicism, EssJay defended his use
    of the book "Catholicism for Dummies," saying, "This is a text I
    often require for my students, and I would hang my own Ph.D. on it's
   (sic) credibility." (7)

While the Wikipedia community has ejected EssJay and blocked his username, they may have a harder time healing the wound the revelation has inflicted. For insiders, the story challenges their basic beliefs about open-source content management. The Wikipedia page describing the events contains hundreds of postings discussing the relative morality of EssJay's actions and those taken against him.

For the rest of the world, the story amplifies growing concern about Wikipedia as a source for student research. Recently, after several history students all made the same erroneous statement in separate research papers, Middlebury College banned the citation of Wikipedia as a source in research papers and on exams. On campuses across the country, the debate over the move has mounted, with arguments ranging from "no encyclopedia qualifies as an adequate source for a research paper, and neither should Wikipedia" to "this move is the beginning of censorship."

Despite the controversies, the site continues to form a central part of the global internet consciousness, and its continued success will ensure the continued debate about its validity. In some ways, we can see Wikipedia as a metaphor for the evidence of our own senses: we have little control over what we receive, and we do well to remember to take a cautious view of what we think it tells us.

REFERENCES

1. http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/02/08/75194_HNblogtools_1.html

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29wikipedia.html?ex=1173502800&en=7e5cdlcb26d08464&ei=5070

3. http://www.tv.com/the-colbert-report/barry-lando/episode/955739/summary.html

4. http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/06/13.html

5. http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipediaedit_x.htm

6. http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/1351230

7. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/technology/05wikipedia.html?ref=business&pagewanted=all