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

[Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt]

Hello!

I don't think that many members of this list realise just how
inaccessible traditional paper encyclopedias are to most people, or for
that matter how relatively inaccessible most libraries are, even in a
rich part of the world like North America, or even Scandinavia where
the library situation is often better than in many parts of North
America, if not all.  Despite innumerable efforts by librarians over
the last century there is still not a library in every neighborhood and
library hours are, with but a few exceptions, much shorter than store
opening hours, even in the richest of cities and the swankiest of
neighborhods. So even a badly flawed effort like Wikipedia fills a
certain information need.  If it were not there the lesser organized
and even less "expert" Web in general would be doing it. It still does
in a general way, for the many topics not yet covered in Wikipedia.  We
have already discussed many times on this list how potential or actual
library users often use the Web as a reference source.

But once I got this off my chest, I really wanted to mention two topics
which are all too often neglected in a discussion of Wikipedia and are
being neglected here:

1- There is not one but two Wikipedias:  The general Web community
writing general articles on one side, and the Open Source community
writing Open Source and related computer articles on the other, and
contributing now and then to the general article.  I have contacted
persons who are heavily into computer hacking and they tell me that in
many respects Wikipedia is a true reference source (but not the only
one mind you, and not even the principal Web one), because a
significant amount of practitioners in their field go there to create
articles and edit them, using editing traditions which have existed for
more than 20 years in the hacking community.  Is there a similar
tradition in the general Web community? I don't think so.  Much worse,
I don't think that those who are quick to defend Wikipedia as a general
Internet Encyclopedia realise this dichotomy.

2- There is much more involved than "peer review" and "expert" input in
creating any encyclopedia or any encyclopedia-like source based on the
Web.  For starters, there is a lot of "grunt work" involved in getting
teams of people to apply rigorous standards on all kinds of matters
like naming conventions, bibliographic control, and copyright policy,
to name but three out of hundreds.  Wikipedia is currently a bit better
organized with its copyright policies than the other policies, largely
because of the Open Source influence mentioned above.  The open source
movement was born out of copyright and other intellectual property
issues, so getting a good part of the volunteers focused on this is not
always impossible.  But just try to get volonteers focused on common
citation styles for sources used to write an article! Or any similar
standard!!  In a "real" encyclopedia this work would be done by a
combination of clerical, technical and professional staff, and never
mind the subject "experts" we are all talking about here, or the
structure-building editors some of us at least are talking about.

To sum up, we have barely started looking at the issues involved in
building a global Wiki-based general information source on the Web. 
The Open Source community and the media "buzz" surrounding it try to
give us the impression that Wikipedia is IT and the issues will work
themselves out "naturally" if everybody "pitches in".  They forget that
it took them about twenty years to eveolve their own "natural "
information standards. And as librarians we often forget the grunt work
done by clerical staff while the experts have fun "doing their own
thing".

PS, Yes, I know, small town municipal librarians who are forced to do
the grunt work by themselves or worse still, have "volunteers" imposed
on them by the library board and/or municipal council know very well
the importance of that grunt work and they probably laugh their heads
of (or cry) when they hear of the all-volunteer efforts of Wikipedia at
organising an information service.

Alain Vaillancourt

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