[WEB4LIB] Re: Co-founder of Wikipedia talks about problems

[Lars Aronsson]

K.G. Schneider wrote:
> I blogged about Sanger's post this weekend, myself. The problems with
> Wikipedia are endemic to its design. 

Your conclusion is that "Good encyclopedias already exist.  Wikipedia
is fixing a problem that isn't there".  This criticism goes far
beyond Larry Sanger's, and I think you both miss your target. (In your
blog you might want to correct the spelling of his name.)

First we must agree that Wikipedia is needed, or this discussion
becomes pointless.  Second, improvements over what Wikipedia is today
must be possible to implement, either in Wikipedia or in a competing
system.  I'm looking forward to such improvements, but neither Larry
nor you have contributed in this direction.  I much appreciate Larry's
criticism because it combines his unique long experience with an
outsider position.  Some problems that he describes are very real.  
But instead of talking about a fork of the project, he should go ahead
and make one.

A third and minor detail is that I think you have misunderstood
Wikipedia's concept of Neutral Point of View.  NPOV does not mean the
encyclopedia must arrive at a single point of view.  Instead, it often
means that the text of the encyclopedia should be neutral in the
presentation of the various points of view that exist in society.  
This should be very similar to the role of a library.  If you have
found Wikipedia articles on "hamster care, divorce, or chicken
recipes" where this is a problem, I'd be interested in references.

That the web needs a free encyclopedia (and none existed before 2001)  
is shown by Wikipedia's outstanding popularity.  Many people are
buying the concept, even if some librarians aren't.  According to
alexa.com, Wikipedia.org has gone from rank 600 to 200 among the
world's most popular websites in the latter half of 2004,
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&y=t&url=wikipedia.org

(Since Alexa was created by the infamous non-librarian Brewster Kahle,
this reference might disqualify me entirely from this discussion, but
that's a risk I must take.)

IMDb.com has an Alexa rank of 68 and I wouldn't be surprised if 
Wikipedia lands around 50 and stays there.  If it were as bad as you 
suggest, it would fall off the list pretty soon, wouldn't it?

It can of course be argued that nobody needs the web (or blogs, such
as yours) in the first place, because good libraries and printing
presses already exist (note that alexa.com compares Wikipedia to other
websites, not to libraries).  But creative people needed the Apple
Macintosh in 1984 and mobile people needed the Model T Ford in 1908,
despite the existence of good steam trains.  Those who were satisfied
with steam computers didn't care about these novelties. Innovations
always appeal to new categories of users.  Wikipedia is primarily for
Internet users, not for traditional users of encyclopedias.  This is a
classic generation shift, as described in "The Innovator's Dilemma" by
Clayton M. Christensen.

When Linux was new, at least one academic researcher in operating
systems (Andrew Tanenbaum) launched heavy criticism.  What followed?
Should Linus Torvalds erase his code, apologize to the world, and then
ask the professor for a specification of how to do it right?  
Shouldn't the professor design his own, superior operating system?
Actually, Tanenbaum had already done this.  His system, Amoeba, was
very advanced, and it still is.  But nobody uses it.  Even though
Amoeba and Linux are both operating systems designed around 1990, they
solve entirely different problems for different categories of users.
Linux was designed for PC owners who wanted a decent UNIX-like
operating system (better than CP/M and MS-DOS) that supports their
hardware and allows them to run free software designed for UNIX.
This is very different from the design goals of Amoeba.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/