Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!

Last week, I was forwarded a link to “Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth: Why the online encyclopedia’s epistemology should worry those who care about traditional notions of accuracy,” by Simson L. Garfinkel, from the November/December 2008 issue of MIT Technology Review.

Yes, I’m continuing the debate on Wikipedia, for two reasons.  Why?

Well, for one, because I think the use of Wikipedia needs more real discussion than it has received to date, from what I’m reading and hearing.  Wikipedia is ubiquitous, and so many students, and not a few researchers, use it as part of their work.  Thus, to simply throw up our hands in defeat and accept Wikipedia without question is defeatist.  Likewise, the other extreme, of outright banning its use, is a bit reactionary, in my view.  Let us understand exactly what Wikipedia is, what its standards for accuracy and truth are, how it is organized, and such.  From there, we can determine its uses and relevance.

Secondly, there are some fascinating philosophical questions in this article about epistemology, truth, objectivity, standards, and many other things that have been held dear for many centuries in Western culture.  In my view, these questions are ones the philosophically-minded should be weighing in on as Wikipedia gets debated.

So, why is “wikitruth” problematic?  According to Garfinkel:

So how do the Wikipedians decide what’s true and what’s not? On what is their epistemology based?

Unlike the laws of mathematics or science, wikitruth isn’t based on principles such as consistency or observa­bility. It’s not even based on common sense or firsthand experience. Wikipedia has evolved a radically different set of epistemological standards–standards that aren’t especially surprising given that the site is rooted in a Web-based community, but that should concern those of us who are interested in traditional notions of truth and accuracy. On Wikipedia, objective truth isn’t all that important, actually. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is that it appeared in some other publication–ideally, one that is in English and is available free online. “The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth,” states Wikipedia’s official policy on the subject.

Verifiability is one of Wikipedia’s three core content policies; it was codified back in August 2003. The two others are “no original research” (December 2003) and “neutral point of view,” which the Wikipedia project inherited from Nupedia, an earlier volunteer-written Web-based free encyclopedia that existed from March 2000 to September 2003 (Wikipedia’s own NPOV policy was codified in December 2001). These policies have made Wikipedia a kind of academic agora where people on both sides of politically charged subjects can rationally discuss their positions, find common ground, and unemotionally document their differences. Wikipedia is successful because these policies have worked….

Verifiability is really an appeal to au­thority–not the authority of truth, but the authority of other publications. Any other publication, really. These days, information that’s added to Wikipedia without an appropriate reference is likely to be slapped with a “citation needed” badge by one of Wikipedia’s self-appointed editors. Remove the badge and somebody else will put it back. Keep it up and you might find yourself face to face with another kind of authority–one of the English-language Wikipedia’s 1,500 administrators, who have the ability to place increasingly restrictive protections on contentious pages when the policies are ignored….

So what is Truth? According to Wikipedia’s entry on the subject, “the term has no single definition about which the majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree.” But in practice, Wikipedia’s standard for inclusion has become its de facto standard for truth, and since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it’s the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.

That standard is simple: something is true if it was published in a newspaper article, a magazine or journal, or a book published by a university press–or if it appeared on Dr. Who.

Thoughts?  Comments on Wikipedia’s understanding of truth?

A hat-tip to Slashdot.org and my forwarder for this article.