Nicholas Carr has a great reply to Larry Sanger’s article in Edge about Citizendium. Carr’s reply is lengthy, but a damn fine read. Sometimes I think Carr is the only one who understands basic facts like this:
Whatever happens between Wikipedia and Citizendium, here’s what Wales and Sanger cannot be forgiven for: They have […]
I heard through the grapevine of a blogger’s announcement that she will be conducting her research through a wiki.
I’ve been wanting to do the same thing for a while, but having some hosting space gives me the flexibility of installing my own software. I was looking at some, Mediawiki which runs Wikipedia for instance, but […]
The uniqueness of Wikipedia is that, unlike the traditional models of creation, dissent is included in the presentation. That is, unlike a traditional encyclopedia which might frame a debate as entirely or mostly one-sided, the collaborative nature of Wikipedia illustrates how ideas work in the real world. Most topics, especially as you move away from the purely abstract to the purely concrete, don’t exist in a state of total one-sided consensus. If there is a heated debate surrounding a topic or issue, is that not in itself worthy of being known by the end user, by the very fact that it allows the reader to make an educated choice for his- or herself? Is it not information, part of the truth of the issue that such a debate exists?
He does notice a few that are philosophically important, beyond “Don’t believe anything on Wikipedia”: Neutral Point of View is always impossible in theory, very often impossible in practiceThe wasted energy on edit wars, and the eventual appeal to a higher power (i.e. Jimbo) who makes undemocratic decisionsCounter to the theory of “greatness through mediocrity”, the decline of articles from “Featured” status–this shouldn’t be the case, if everything, theoretically, moves towards perfection.The dislike of experts:Experts are derided on Wikipedia because they don’t tend to follow the rules…. And when you say “well, screw you” and then undo it and they realise that they can’t follow the rules, they leave.His apt conclusion is that Wikipedia started as “an idea of human knowledge edited by everybody, with no idea of how human beings actually are.”… Yet, as Neil Postman notes, just because the media has effected the way we tend to read and write, or the way reading and writing is going to become, doesn’t mean it is necessarily beneficial.I think that wiki’s, perhaps not Wikipedia itself, are going to be an essential part of our future cultural creation.
