How many of you knew that Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia, is written entirely by the public? Anybody can post to Wikipedia and anybody can revise anything on it.
Since I started grad school at a small, selective liberal arts college, I've been staggered at how many people, students and faculty alike, use Wikipedia as a reference. The head reference librarian, trying to help me find out something about Islam, searched Wikipedia. Classmates and teachers pass around links to Wikipedia definitions.
Well, folks, try looking up some subject about which you know a great deal. Choose something that's a little obscure. Months ago I happened to look up the country of Lebanon, and found that the entry covering my hometown seemed to have been written by an Israeli. One tipoff was he insisted on spelling the name in an Anglicization of the Hebrew, and gave three different Hebrew versions. By the time you read this, the entry will have been edited. If you click on "discussion" you will see my disgusted critique. If you click on Edit, you can change the entry at will.
What if I decided to write up an entry for Lod*, Israel? I have lots of Palestinian friends from Lidda, the town's name until 1948. Never mind that I'm not an historian or scholar, and that I have my own particular Lebanese-American point of view. I could click over right this minute and write up whatever I want about Lod. Perhaps some alert Wiki-minder might notice the change, and if it's egregious, they might change it back. But if the town or the country or whatever the topic is obscure enough, perhaps not.
I love Wikipedia, don't get me wrong, but the way people use it leads me to believe that many don't understand its true nature.
The software for Wikipedia, and any other wiki, allows anybody to contribute, edit, revise or delete anything. Do you understand what that means? Any entry in the place can be slapped up by anybody. There is no editor in charge, only lots of busybodies who look at changes to see if they're malicious. It's the collective mind at work.
This can sometimes lead to good information. It can sometimes lead to weird information, or bad information.
In Wikis, as in anything else, let the reader beware.
Rebecca Blood pointed me to the Guardian article that sparked this: can you trust Wikipedia?
*Lod, Israel, according to Wikipedia, is the hometown of St. George, the patron saint of my father's village. Which may explain the name of one of its infamous sons. Read about him if you want a sample of the Wikipedia way.
You gotta love Wikipedia - but carefully.
The negative tones of recent public critiques of the Wikipedia has surprised me. As someone who frequently uses the Wikipedia and who has written several articles (click on my link), I find the nastiness of many of the comments surprising. Of course some articles are bad! So were some of the articles in the Brittanica, which is no longer being updated. The Wikipedia articles are more variable in quality, but I'm also pleased at the greater breadth of topics that are covered. Articles on technical topics are often excellent since technical folks started using Wikipedia first.
Most of the criticism of Wikipedia is coming from professional journalists who fear the impact that free, decent-quality writing will have on their professions. Of course free content created by volunteers will never surpass carefully edited content created by professional writers: no one has said otherwise. Nonetheless, the Wikipedia is young and those in charge are still figuring things out. We should give the institution a chance to find its way.
It should be pointed out that there are an awful lot of really good articles in Wikipedia. Recently I was asked to write an article about phase-change memory for the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Materials Science, a multivolume work that costs thousands of dollars. I was humbled to see just how good the existing articles on "DVD" and "Ovonic unified memory" were in the Wikipedia. While I and my coauthor did our best with our article, I couldn't say that we produced is better than what's alreadyin the Wikipedia.
Posted by: Alison Chaiken | October 29, 2005 at 05:41 PM
Hello! I happened to see your site while looking for Middle Eastern Furniture. I guess one of your posts (on your Uncle's "palace" brought up your blog. LOL I began reading and also perused your biography which seems to be as varied as mine! Through genealogical searches, I found that on my father's side, I am descended of both Syrian Arabs and Jews and I'm am descended from Jews on my mother's side. I was raised Christian (both sides of my family were unaware of their distant ethnic origins) and so I thought I was just German on my father's side and Mexican on my mother's. I know confusing. Anyway, I am deeply interested in what is happening in the Middle East and have always felt very connected to it. I will be adding your blog to my "favorites" list.
Posted by: Tracey | November 05, 2005 at 02:13 PM
Support Syrian people who are caught in the middle! Check the new Friends of Syria website and sign the list.
http://www.friendsofsyria.com/index.php
Posted by: FOS | November 06, 2005 at 09:30 AM