|
Robert Henry, former chief editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, critiques the open source encyclopedia Wikipedia at TechCentralStation.
He notes that
The idea that animates the entire undertaking . . . is expressed in the discussion of editing policy:
"However, one of the great advantages of the Wiki system is that incomplete or poorly written first drafts of articles can evolve into polished, presentable masterpieces through the process of collaborative editing. This gives our approach an advantage over other ways of producing similar end-products. Hence, the submission of rough drafts should also be encouraged as much as possible." In other words, the process allows Wikipedia to approach the truth asymptotically. The basis for the assertion that this is advantageous vis-à-vis the traditional method of editing an encyclopedia remains, however, unclear. McHenry picks a particular entry and documents serious problems with it. Furthermore, many of the faults were introduced during the revision process, so the piece became worse, not better, as the "community" worked on it.
His reaction:
Is this a surprising result? Not really: Take the statements of faith in the efficacy of collaborative editing, replace the shibboleth "community" with the banal "committee," and the surprise dissolves before your eyes. Or, if you are of a statistical turn of mind, think a little about regression to the mean and the shape of the normal distribution curve. However closely a Wikipedia article may at some point in its life attain to reliability, it is forever open to the uninformed or semiliterate meddler. McHenry's concluding thought:
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. McHenry has a book out entitled How to Know that looks interesting. I just one-clicked it.
- posted by James DeLong @ 7:41 AM | General
TrackBacks (0)
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Encyclopedic Open Source:
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blog.pff.org/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/95
|
