[Web4lib] The Wikipedia Gotcha

[Lars Aronsson]

David Dorman wrote:

> Recently encountered in my inbox and presented anonymously to protect the
> guilty:
> "I love it how I can use Wikipedia to win just about any argument.. and it
> only takes a few seconds to make the edit beforehand."


What this really tells us is what people have come to *expect* 
from an encyclopedia, rather than what Wikipedia really is. 

Traditionally, encyclopedias were a gift to kids when they went to 
college, before the PC took on that role.  The cost of purchase 
($1000?) divided by the number of times people actually look 
something up (once a month?) in their encyclopedia over its 
lifetime (10 years? = 120 months) can be quite high ($1000 / 120 = 
$8.30 per lookup).  But despite this, encyclopedias sold very 
well, not because of their usefulness but because of the prestige.

The founders of Wikipedia really wanted to create an encyclopedia, 
as opposed to the creators of Americana, World Book or Britannica, 
who actually wanted to earn money from *selling* that prestige, 
where the creation of an encyclopedia was merely a necessary cost.

It is a fact that Wikipedia can be used as an authority in some 
discussions, but this says nothing of Wikipedia or its founders, 
and everything about the people who accept such arguments.  When 
somebody points to an authority, we should do like dogs: look at 
the pointing finger, rather than look in its direction.

Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned for Wikipedia: People can 
use and are obviously willing to pay for the prestige of 
knowledge, even if it is entirely separated from actual knowledge. 
The CDROM or DVD encyclopedia (Encarta) may contain the same 
amount of actual knowledge, but people aren't prepared to pay the 
same $1000 for a DVD as for 20 bound volumes of a printed 
encyclopedia.  The online, community-built Wikipedia pulls in even 
less money.  What this business needs to figure out is a way to 
pull in the same old $1000 per subscriber, from people who need 
the prestigeous symbol rather than the actual contents.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se