Wikipedia

Oliver Kamm, Stephen Pollard, whom I read regularly and admire, and many others, including Wikipedia itself have weighed in recently with criticism of Wikipedia. Previously I have written approvingly of Wikipedia and I remain generally positive about it. The only thing that I would change in that earlier post would be to emphasize more strongly that Wikipedia is not about to overtake Britannica or any other encyclopedia any time soon, if ever. The point remains, however, that it is always a bad idea to cite encyclopedias which are superb starting points for research but not enough on their own.

I think that the critics are missing some important points, however. The most important in my mind being the fact that like it or not Wikipedia, or something like it, is not going away so long as we have the Internet. Collaborative knowledge-building via the Web is here to stay. Whether or not it displaces established encyclopedias remains to be seen--I doubt it will, as I said above. Therefore critics are pissing against the wind which is a good way to get your trousers wet but bothers the wind not at all.

Pollard says that Wikipedia is inaccurate on every topic he knows something about. Yet he declines to correct any of it, even the entry on himself which contains glaring errors. Which is sort of a problem. If elites can't be bothered to input even minimally, then they haven't got much of a platform for complaining about it. There's an interesting discussion/debate on wikipedia on languagelabunleashed. Just over halfway through one of the discussants says 'it is incumbent upon us to engage with Wikipedia and a mistake to step behind and let it pass.' I have to agree.

I recall immediately after the 7/7 bombings occurred here in London Professor Michael Clarke called an emergency meeting of the War Studies Department staff to compare notes on what had happened as, naturally enough, journalists in large numbers began to call looking for commentary and analysis. (My moment of surreality came when asked urgently by a BBC reporter over the phone what I thought was happening while I was scanning the BBC website trying to figure out what I thought was happening.) After the meeting I looked at the Wikipedia entry on '7 July 2005 London bombings' in the first few hours afterwards was by far the best and most comprehensive account available.

In short, Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia although it has some value as one, and it's not a news source although it had an edge as a collector of links over traditional sources in that instance (and presumably others), it's something else which by and large I think is significant and useful and bound to get more so. On the other hand, one thing that bothers me is the tendency I have noticed recently for Google searches on all sorts of topics to return Wikipedia entries as the first hit. What's up with that? Given that is happening, however, it makes it all the more important that those who want to lead and inform debate get more involved in this sort of social media instead of just bitching about it and hoping it will go away.