Wikipedia and “Digital Maoism”.
An interesting article in the Times today about how an entry in Wikipedia was born and how it evolved. It's fine when errors are corrected, but, in my experience, the contributors with odd opinions often prevail.
Quote:
The phenomenal but unreliable online encyclopedia is best used with a healthy dose of scepticism
When Kenneth Lay, the disgraced Enron chief, died suddenly this month, Reuters conducted an important experiment: the news service carefully monitored the way the death was described on Wikipedia,
Quote:
The news broke at 10am. Over the next half-hour, Lay’s entry on Wikipedia was edited five times. At 10.06 the death was “an apparent suicide”; two minutes later it was “heart attack or suicide”; at 10.11, the first moralist chimed in with a declaration that “the guilt of ruining so many lives finaly (sic) led him to suicide”; a few minutes later “a doctor”, pronounced that the “stress” of Lay’s trial had probably killed him. Thus, in the space of a few minutes, Wikipedia had produced four different causes of death: suicide, heart failure, nervous strain and the retribution of a just God.
Quote:
Wikipedia’s defenders, however, argue that the death of Lay shows the resilience of the system. True, there were initial inaccuracies, but these were edited out over time. The system worked precisely as intended.
Quote:
There is also a danger of what some critics call “online collectivism”, or “digital Maoism”. Just because a majority of people happen to believe something does not authenticate it. History is littered with unpleasant examples of moments when the collective voice, ignorant or misled, has drowned out dissent. Wikipedia gropes towards a consensus, but that is very different from truth.
That final quote sums it up for me. TW has a way to go before being guilty of "digital Maoism", but there are perhaps too many places across the web where “online collectivism” is a required part of participating in that particular forum, directory, or community.
- Y! MyWeb
Wikis depend on the notion
Wikis depend on the notion that a million heads are wiser than one. Whilst there is of course some truth in that, consider that it effectively permits mob rule online - something we've tried to exclude from almost every other field of human endeavour
Side Note
Looks like digitalmaoism.com was registered today - looks like lofty plans for that website, ha! Did somebody read the article and manually register it, or has it become a case of push-button robot crawling to identify new buzzwords?
Any Wiki, is simply a
Any Wiki, is simply a collection of ideas. It may not be 100% accurate. Many understand this, some do not. But overall even with the Ken Lay example, it should serve as a focus point for people to ask questions... check out supporting links... see their own answers... etc.
I find that Wikis are generally good for exploring and putting one on a path for looking at more info. Don't think that just because that real world encyclopedia at the library was published by a old/noble publishing house that it is correct. There are all sorts of text books that go back and forth on facts from edition to edition, that are wrong in one edition not just for pushing 'one view' of the truth. There are sometimes editorial errors where qualifiers like: and, or, but, if, and others are unintentionally left out in new printings.
New editions in this manner, can completely change the intent of a statement, article, etc. on subjects that school children read which may not have explored a particular topic with enough depth to make some one say 'a-ha, there must be an error in this sentence'. While teachers are smart people, even they sometimes miss this and teach 'out of the book'. Luckily a wiki can be corrected over time and/or if you have multiple strong cases, unless an over-zealous editor goes editing, different points of view can co-exist on the same page.
Pretty famous example of this would be the books written by 'J. R. R. Tolkien'. Some minor edits between versions, publishing houses, etc. From what I've read, it made him a little off kilter that there would always be errors. You could wiki that, as is, or you could read interviews, etc. that talk about this. Up to you.
Dewey Wins!
Slow news day over at the times, eh?
Control system theory teaches us that robust and stable systems need to achieve an steady state before they are to be trusted. Absent any other knowledge about the end point, it is also the best way to get to a target (Newton's method). The times is just jealous and trying to stab at the 'pedia.
Of course the real problem is not technology. The reason the times can't see the obvious ways to successfully criticize wikipedia, is the same reason the times worries about the competitive threat wikipedia poses. They suck, too.
Infinite Knowledge
Well Wiki is the biggest source for infortmation appart from the Internat iteself. That by itself makes it valuable.
there is a difference
between information and opinion.
there is a difference
Only in certain contexts; [voiced] opinion is information ;)