On Wikipedia, "Web 2.0" and eventualism.
Oct. 7th, 2005 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
There's a long rant on Wikipedia (and the so-called Web 2.0) by Nicholas G. Carr called The amorality of Web 2.0. I wrote a lengthy response which Mr Carr has posted as his latest entry. (Goodness!) I've put the lengthy response below, as I posted it. (With links added for jargon. It's a Wikipedia post, I have to pepper it with links!)
Everything you've written here is a valid opinion, and commercial encyclopedias are doomed anyway because (as Microsoft is finding out with Linux) it's hard to compete with free. (I eagerly await EB putting out TCO studies on Wikipedia.)
Speaking as someone who's highly involved in it (I write stuff, I'm an administrator, I'm on the Arbitration Committee, I'm a mailing list moderator, I do media interviews), Wikipedia is of mediocre quality with some really good bits. If you hit the "Random page" link twenty times, you'll end up mostly with sketchy three-paragraph stub articles.
That said, the good bits are fantastic. Although articles good enough to make "Featured Article" status (which are indeed excellent) tend to be hideously esoteric; somehow getting more general articles up to that sort of quality is not facilitated at present.
Encyclopedia Britannica is an amazing work. It's of consistent high quality, it's one of the great books in the English language and it's doomed. Brilliant but pricey has difficulty competing economically with free and apparently adequate (see Worse is better — this story plays out over and over again in the computing field and is the essence of "disruptive technology"). They could release the entire EB under an open content license, but they have shareholders who might want a word about that.
So if we want a good encyclopedia in ten years, it's going to have to be a good Wikipedia. So those who care about getting a good encyclopedia are going to have to work out how to make Wikipedia better, or there won't be anything.
I've made some efforts in this direction — pushing toward a page-rating feature, a "Rate this page" tab at the top, which, unlike an editorial committee, will actually scale with the contributor base and will highlight areas in need of attention. (See Article validation feature and En validation topics — the feature is currently waiting on an implementation the lead developer thinks won't kill the database.) Recent discussion on the WikiEN-L mailing list has also included proposals for a scaleable article rating system.
Wikipedia is likely to be it by first-mover advantage and network effect. Think about what you can do to ensure there is a good encyclopedia in ten years.
I could rewrite that more clearly, to fix the obvious holes my dear nitpicking readers will now comment on — I dashed it off in about half an hour while making and eating dinner last night — but it'll do.
(Eventualism: "a tendency amongst Wikipedians, which focuses on the eventual value of Wikipedia, in the Long Now, rather than the immediate value. Contrast immediatism; the opposite viewpoint.")
(Web 2.0: a Wired/Negroponte-style dot-com wank phrase that means less the more closely you look.)
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Date: 2005-10-07 10:15 am (UTC)On a related note, are you familiar with Placeopedia ?
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Date: 2005-10-07 10:20 am (UTC)I haven't used Placeopedia, but I do recall you mentioning it ;-)
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Date: 2005-10-08 05:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-08 08:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 10:25 am (UTC)Of course, it's possible that Wikipedia might approach the perceived quality of Britannica in the medium term, in which case the threat would be real, but I wouldn't take that for granted.
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Date: 2005-10-07 10:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 10:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-08 01:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 10:40 am (UTC)Libraries are glorified combination of internet cafes, OAP reading rooms, care-in-the-community day centres and a half-way-house between Blockbuster and CashConverter in terms of CD and DVD rental. In 10 years they'll look like Starbucks (probably due to being owned by them), or be shut - the lot of them. My basis for this opinion - my mother is Reference Librarian for Lancashire (and has been for about 10 years now), and if she had the funding for a Britannica in every branch she'd spend the money on replacing several hundred other books per branch instead.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 10:47 am (UTC)I imagine the same is true of other libraries. And as they aren't going away - the number of visits to UK public libraries is apparently rising nicely - I wouldn't take it for granted that the more traditional reference works will disappear.
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Date: 2005-10-07 11:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 11:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 12:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 01:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 06:34 pm (UTC)That would be a terrible work perk. I'd get fired for never getting any work done.
sounds like..
Date: 2005-10-07 11:56 am (UTC)perhaps Wikipedia should put "don't panic" on the main page.