[Web4lib] Is Wikipedia Failing?

[Crawford,Walt]

The example Emory Craig provides is interesting but tricky: By all accounts, MS was trying to get errors corrected by paying an expert to say *whatever the expert wanted to say*--because MS couldn't do it directly. There was no attempt at secrecy, no attempt to control the message.

Wikipedia's response--"Commission a white paper and suggest that we link to it"--was astonishing. 

Not quite as astonishing as the attitude toward anyone "tampering with" an entry on themselves--unless, of course, they're a Special Case like Cory Doctorow, who apparently is allowed to edit his own entry. Otherwise, you can't say you don't want to be in Wikipedia, you can't correct flagrant errors in your entry (unless you do so via meatpuppet or pseudonym)...well, it makes me happy I'm non-notable (in English, at least).

[Yes, I use Wikipedia...as a starting point. Yes, I've made edits...two of them. But also, yes, I have better things to do, especially since Alain V's experience is by no means unique.]

Walt Crawford

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Craig, Emory
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 11:45 AM
To: Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt; web4lib
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Is Wikipedia Failing?

Alain, 

You have a good point and one that Goldman misses -- the "shouting newcomer." If Wikipedia continues to be successful, I think marketers and self-promoters will eventually become an issue (an ex. that comes to mind is MS efforts to hire a blogger to change articles) in the future. But for now, there is enough of a challenge dealing with those whose knowledge is inversely proportional to their desire to be heard. I can see how it would wear you down.

-e

Emory Craig
Director of Academic Computing
The College of New Rochelle
914-654-5536

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt [mailto:ndgmtlcd at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 11:28 AM
To: Craig, Emory; web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: RE : RE: [Web4lib] Is Wikipedia Failing?


--- "Craig, Emory" <ecraig at cnr.edu> a écrit :

> will soon fold under the weight of marketers and self-promoters, that
> volunteer editors will eventually grow weary of maintaining its
> integrity:
> 

I've been editing in Wikipedia for a bit more than four years, at a
rather fast pace at first but at a much slower speed about two years
ago.

I grew weary maintaiing the integrity of articles I started or worked
on not at all because of the weight of marketers and self-promoters
(there are very few in the kind of out-of-the-way articles I cover like
the ones on antique furniture) or child vandals like the ones
constantly chipping away at the "Industrial evolution" article but
because of the constant renewal of newcomers who decide that they know
everything about a topic after reading three or four Web pages on it,
or seen two movies on it and then decide that their facts are better
than anyone else's and are willing to "shout them down" in a continuous
textual fashion, in any series of appeals to consensus-oriented
committees made up for the purpose.

I'd seen this phenomenon right from the start, in articles I didn't
care too much for. As the months and years went by I wondered how long
it would be before articles I did care for got this kind of "shouting
newcomer" attention and what I would feel about it. One day it happened
to one article, because it had been featured, and then to another
because a movie indirectly connected with it got some media attention. 
The shouting newcomers exhausted me very fast.  I don't like
controversy or arguments, that's why I've always avoided articles
surrounding hot topics like Israle or Armenia or Turkey.

So it's more than the marketers, the self promoters and the petty
vandals that are chipping away, constantly.

Alain Vaillancourt

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