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.

Good morning, readers, and happy Friday!

Doing my usual daily perusal of Bookforum.com a few days ago, I found the following articles.

The first is “The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives: A tribute to Joseph Weizenbaum,” by Geert Lovink. The abstract reads:

“There is only one way to turn signals into information, through interpretation”, wrote the computer critic Joseph Weizenbaum. As Google’s hegemony over online content increases, argues Geert Lovink, we should stop searching and start questioning.

Lovink offers some interesting insights and criticisms of the Google model, and why we should question it, as Google moves into its second decade of existence.

In the second article, “Early response to false claims in Wikipedia,” P.D. Magnus writes:

A number of studies have assessed the reliability of entries in the Wikipedia at specific times. One important difference between the Wikipedia and traditional media, however, is the dynamic nature of its entries. An entry assessed today might be substantially extended or reworked tomorrow. This study paper assesses the frequency with which small, inaccurate changes are quickly corrected.

I’m not sure that this article will sway skeptics, but it does offer some additional empirical evidence that minor errors in Wikipedia are corrected quickly.

Wikipedia articles have a bad reputation among academics and librarians of being of dubious provenance, poor quality, and low accuracy. From what I have been reading, many are usually quick to discourage or forbid students from using Wikipedia in their research.*

Yet, in spite of all the criticisms and questions, Wikipedia endures, thrives, and grows. Google is even preparing a product — the “knol” — to compete with Wikipedia. It would appear that Wikipedia and its competitors are not going away any time in the near future.

Does this mean that professors (and librarians) should embrace Wikipedia, or at least give it another look? Mark A. Wilson offers an argument for doing so in InsideHigherEd.com.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for this article.

*In the interest of full-disclosure: I do not share this view of Wikipedia. I have used it on occasion, to get quick background information about something that I’m researching. And I have cited articles from it in an introduction to philosophy that I wrote last year. In short, as a handy and ready source of information on a topic, Wikipedia is fairly reliable.

Nonetheless — and my regular readers will know this — I do not endorse using Wikipedia alone, just as I do not endorse using any reference source alone. Good research and searching includes triangulating information and research and critically evaluating sources, as I’ve written about elsewhere, and Wikipedia is no exception. I generally try to confirm what I read in a Wikipedia article from other sources, to ensure accuracy.

I recently received, from a family member, a link to a Slashdot.org article titled, “The Knol Hypothesis.” As I skimmed over the article, the author referenced Google’s announcement of the development of a product called the “knol.” A “knol” — what is this? A misspelling of “knoll”?

Now, generally when I hear the word “knoll,” I think of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, most of which involve a mysterious “third gunman on the grassy knoll.” This suggestion usually includes the involvement of Cuban exiles, LBJ, the CIA, the Mafia, the KGB, or some combination thereof. (For the record: I endorse none of these theories.)

All humor aside, I did not having a clue as to what a “knol” is. So, I linked over to the Google press release, where I learned the following:

Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors['] names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

As an academic librarian, this announcement got my attention quickly. Why? Because, as the Slashdot.org article notes, this Knol Project sounds a good deal like Wikipedia, though nowhere in the release does Google mention Wikipedia. Is Google trying to compete with Wikipedia? It seems that this is indeed the case, even if Google isn’t admitting it openly.

The remainder of this article looks at what might be going on here, and how Google could compete with Wikipedia, especially in terms of the quality of the knols, or, at least in the perception of quality.

Why is this article worth reading?

1. Dependency of Google & Wikipedia. For one thing, we’ve become used to, even dependent on, Google and Wikipedia, among other things, to do all sorts of academic research. research. Looking at their evolution and new products is a good way to keep on top of them.
2. Keeping Abreast of the Digital Revolution. For another, we are still in the very early stages of the digital revolution. The way that we do research, think about and organize knowledge and information is changing in ways that we can’t even imagine, and how it will all shake out in the end remains to be seen. Knol v. Wikipedia is merely one of the opening feints in this chess game.
3. Real Quality vs. Perceived Quality. Real quality vs. the perception of quality is a third matter — if Dr. Joseph Diplomamill at Podunk State University signs off on an article, does that give it more authority and quality than an unsigned Wikipedia article? There have been a number of questions raised about the quality of the articles on Wikipedia — will a knol be any improvement?
4. Quality vs. Share of Ad Revenue. Finally, the juxtaposition of knols with ad dollars raises some troubling questions: are we going to get mediocre “experts” signing off on articles cribbed from Wikipedia and other free sources just get a share of the ad revenue? (Again, we’re back to real quality vs. the perception of quality.)

I strongly recommend reading the Slashdot.org article, along with the comments following it, because I get the sense that we’re going to see a lot of more of Knol in the very near future. And when it does go live, make sure to evaluate it critically if you do use it.