[Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia

[Jennifer Heise]

>
> Current applications on the web work under this ground-up,
> constructionist, postmodern view of truth and authority. Google.
> Wikipedia. Social tagging. Blogs. This was the point of Peter Morville's
> article. On the web, things that are popular--i.e., things that are
> linked to most often--are perceived as "more authoritative" and thus
> "more truthful." Maybe not to you, and maybe not to me, but in the eyes
> of the general population, I think this holds true.


But isn't this also the premise of the Citation Indexes? Things that are
cited more often must be more authoritative? Not that their popularity makes
them more authoritative, but that being authoritative makes them popular.

Either there's a false dichotomy here, or the fact that the most
authoritative information is generally the hardest to get to in the library
world, and the highest priced, is a deliberate attempt to make authoritative
information less findable.

Getting away from the online world: which is more findable, the radio report
of the AP news article on the scientific study summarized in JAMA, or the
expensive medical journal article that JAMA is summarizing? The problem that
less authoritative information is more findable is not new or online. The
idea of making information in general more findable, and trying different
ways to create more authoritative information sources, that's what's new.