Would you trust WikiPedia with your life?
Sun, Oct 7, 2007
Business Theory, Design, Developing, Innovation, Inspiration, Personal
WikiPedia is cool and I use it several times a week. Still, the discussion regarding the quality of the information offered is far from over as far as I’m concerned. I recently read Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger which is an incredibily inspiring book. In his book Weinberger quotes (original article) Robert McHenry who is a former Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica:
The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.
It is easy to dismiss this quote because of the background of this writer and most people do. As a former editor of Encyclopedia Britannica it is only logical to question his motives. Sure he doesn’t like WikiPedia!
But I’m not interested in questioning his motives. I’m interested in his argument. In fact, I’m inclined to agree with his point, although I don’t necessarily want to dismiss WikiPedia based on it.
Weinberger and every other WikiPedia enthusiast (including me) have always pointed out that although some articles on WikiPedia might not be completely correct they always end up getting better as time passes and informed people correct mistakes and fill in the blanks at incomplete articles. And if a mistake would be made (on purpose or by accident) it would eventually be fixed by other people who recognise it as such.
This is something you take into account as you browse WikiPedia and it is considered a minor nuisance. I don’t think it is a minor nuisance though. I think it undermines the whole system.
A friend of mine changed 20 lesser known diseases on WikiPedia from benign to malignant. People visiting those pages will be misinformed and that will greatly impact their lives. If only for a few hours. Yes, some articles were changed within minutes but some are still not updated. And even if they are updated within minutes it is still possible that a few visitors read those pages during those few minutes that the information was wrong.
Now I have some good news and bad news.
The good news is that I made this up. No friend of mine changed any diseases on Wikipedia. At least, not that I know of.
And that is the bad news. How can we ever trust WikiPedia? How can you know that the information on the page you visit hasn’t been changed by information terrorists (or simply misinformed people) a few seconds ago? You should at least monitor the information on the page you read for a few days before you can trust it, a little bit more, and check the information on other services like Answers.com or, well, the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Some of the information on Wikipedia may be wrong some of the time and we will have to work on a mechanism to make sure we know which parts are undisputed and can be trusted.
Until then, make sure you wash your hands, very carefully, on your way out.
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I agree with you Boris. Recently, there is a lot of discussion on co-creation, identity, RealNames, the role of experts, web 3.0 as hybrid of web 1.0 and web 2.0, wisdom of the crowds, collective intelligence and the changing nature of authority.
In my view, Wikipedia can be combined with Brittanica…..resulting in best of both world websites and initiatives like Citizendium. The latter has a prominent role for experts on specific subjects as well as Real Names as to prevent abuse and misuse by anonymous contributors. I strongly believe this is the way forward for the web in this respect. It may the (emerging) success of Citizendium or one of its successors/copycats. Why ? Because the trends on the web and society as a whole point to authenticity, simplicity, time-efficiency due to lack of time, trust and managed centralized identity.
I like your idea about the relative consistency of a Wikipedia entry over time as a cue for ‘truth’ or qaulity for tyhat particular entry. However, from a user perspective, this might be a non-issue in most cases due to lack of time; they want an instantenous answer to their request in my view.
Well, although you have a point, problem is that research done by nature (we’ve probably all read it, it’s even in ‘the long tail’ (and I mean the book), that there’s not that much difference in conformed mistakes between Brittanica and wikipedia. Although Wikipedia had a few more, those were corrected when it turned out that they were wrong. In Brittanica, that’s not 100% correct either, those mistakes will live on and on and one forever, untill that specific example gets burned or thrashed.
Hi Bas. I don’t think an editor at the Encyclopedia Britannica could change 20 diseases to malignant and get away with it. The problem isn’t the percentage of errors but the possible effect of the errors.
In other words; this is a quantity VS quality discussion. It might be true that the same quantity of typos are present in both services but I’m guessing that the quality of errors is more important for this discussion.
Robert McHenry chose his analogy in a very smart way. I haven’t read posts attacking his position, but I sure hope someone commented on this comparison.
I have never heard of visitors to public toilet that clean the toilets before or after they use it. Why not make it a fair comparison with e.g. a chalkboard?
The mental picture of the toilet is a smart brainhack though…
Hi Boris,
I went to David Weinberger @ Picnic ‘07 and I hope his book is better then his presentation. I thought it didn’t have much depth. I thought it was just somebody speaking enthusiastically about some interactive model on the web which supposedly is changing our human relationships, communication, and society. The deeper meaning about media theory, interaction and social behavior was completely left aside. Let us not forget about Marshall McLuhan. I guess he got stuck in front of his own little computer box too long.
Hi Michiel: I liked his book so much that I have an offer for you: buy the book, read it and if you think it wasn’t worth the price I will give you your money back!
I found it extremely inspiring and wouldn’t mind a second hand copy to give away to other people…
I’m cheap and dirty . I’ll probably tell you i didn’t like it. (just kidding) No, I will trust you on this one and just buy and read it. ;-)
Hi Michiel, I’m sure you will like it…