Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

Podcast: Overcoming Wikipedia's Growing Pains

I've just posted a new podcast called Overcoming Wikipedia's Growing Pains. The podcast was inspired by a Wired News article talking about the challenges faced by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia as it tries to become more broadly accepted both by experts and the public.

As always, the music in the intro and closing is courtesy of the band SubAtomic Glue, used according to their Creative Commons license.

Here's the transcript:

Hi everyone, Andy Carvin here.... Wired News ran a story yesterday regarding Wikipedia's growing pains. The open-content encyclopedia is growing at a rate at seven percent each month, yet many wonder whether the encyclopedia will ever be seen as a "legitimate" reference resource by the general public.

Some academics like Danah Boyd from UCal/Berkeley worry about the site's accuracy. "Usually there's only one or two people involved in writing the entries," Boyd said, "and you don't know anything about who they are." She also added that while some entries, particularly technology-related ones, are in-depth and well-rounded, non-tech entries can be hit or miss. "Guess what?" she continued. "A lot of ancient-history specialists? They're not online, let alone involved in Wikipedia. But a lot of students are going to Wikipedia for information on ancient history."

While these are all fair points, I get frustrated by critics who complain that Wikipedia lacks quality entries in their specific field of expertise. Because Wikipedia is a community effort, the quality of a particular entry rests entirely on whether or not there is a critical mass of expertise to author that topic. Wikipedia needs to do a better job at attracting experts to contribute to the project, while experts who poo-poo Wikipedia need to recognize that it's incumbent upon them to volunteer or encourage their colleagues to contribute as well.

One thing that might be valuable is creating a more transparent way for Wikipedia users to judge the provenance of a particular entry by seeing who created it and their areas of expertise. As it stands right now, when you visit a Wikipedia entry, you can take a look at its edit history to see who's contributed to the page, but you can't always gain much insight from this information.

Take the edit history page for the term Digital Divide. Looking at this history you can see that there are at least a dozen people who've contributed to this page (including me, but only very minor contributions to date). In this list, there are contributors like Dusik, Stevetheman and 129.215.101.110. Of these three individuals, only one of them - Stevetheman - has a profile that leads me to information about him that allows me to make an informed judgment as to whether or not he might be qualified to contribute on this subject. (The third person, as you can see, is just an IP address -- just a bunch of numbers -- so there's no way to even know who on earth they are.)

I think that Wikipedia is wonderful because everyone who's online has the right to contribute to it. But it would be beneficial if there were more transparency in knowing who's contributing what and why. It's a fundamental prerequisite of information literacy: having access to enough information to make an informed decision as to whether a source is accurate and unbiased. The more information you have about the producer of a Wikipedia entry, the better you can decide for yourself whether you think the information they provide is the honest truth, a bunch of horse-hockey, or somewhere in between.

So if it were up to me - and it isn't - here's what I'd recommend.

• Allow anyone to contribute to Wikipedia -- but require them to create a free membership first. Too many Wikipedia entries are authored by anonymous people whose only identification is their computer's IP address, and that doesn't help you judge them as a reliable source or not. For example, I made a very minor edit to the Wikipedia page for the Sultan of Oman, but if you look at the edit history page, you'd never know it because I edited the page without logging in, so my contribution remains anonymous.

• Encourage Wikipedians to create a bio of themselves. It doesn't have to be anything fancy; just something that lets us know about your background, interests and expertise. For example, my user page shows that I'm the director of the Digital Divide Network, and other facts about my background. This information allows a user who visits the "digital divide" entry to make a judgment that a) I'm involved in this particular issue professionally, and b) that I may have a particular policy bias that should be considered when you read Wikipedia entries I've worked on.

• Make Wikipedia more welcoming to experts. Wikipedia is world-famous (okay, Internet-famous) as a place where anyone can post their own encyclopedia entry. This virtual bazaar of cyberpopulism has attracted thousands of participants, including some who think it's their God-given right to be the only editor on a particular subject, whether or not they're an expert. As noted in the Wired article, many experts who've tried to contribute to Wikipedia find themselves criticized by these people, and it turns them off. (On several occasions, I've felt that other Wikipedians have talked down to me and have been dismissive of my contributions because I'm not a "regular.") How this gets fixed is a tough question, but it's incumbent upon those of us who contribute to Wikipedia to keep an open mind and not be selfish or overly protective of our entries. If someone comes in and it's clear they've got an expertise on a subject, hear them out and don't be defensive about the entry you already created. Wikipedia should be about knowledge, not egos.
  

Of course, no matter what improvements Wikipedia makes, many people simply won't trust it because it's not entirely written by experts and can be changed by anyone else. I have a feeling it may be nigh impossible to mollify critics of this particular persuasion. Nonetheless, Wikipedia is a valuable tool for finding information when multiple references are required.

So if you're doing a book report for school, kids, don't necessarily skip Wikipedia just because your teacher told you that you can't trust it. Just don't use it as your only source. Even better: become a Wikipedian and contribute what you've learned to the conversation. To paraphrase Jello Biafra: Don't hate Wikipedia -- become Wikipedia... -ac