Six weeks ago, Robert McHenry, a former editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published The Faith-Based Encyclopedia, an article exposing Wikipedia for being a foolhardy Quixotic experiment gone horribly awry, concluding with:
The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.
Fortunately for humanity, there is a way to know who has used the facilities before and after any edit is made to an article. Incidentally enough, one of the features employed by the Wiki software used at Wikipedia allows anyone, the public-at-large, to view who made any kind of change to an article. Additionally, it allows you to see what the previous versions looked like as everything is permanently stored forever, chiseled into a proverbial stone tablet.
At the same time, I make no claim that Wikipedia is the most authorative or even accurate source of information. In fact, several times I have found the scholarship to be lacking completely, or noticeable biases propagated. However, one should not throw the baby out with the bath water.
In his piece, Mr. McHenry illustrates the inaccuracy of Wikipedia by pointing to an article on Alexander Hamilton, which was riddled with inaccuracies and inconsistent statements. However, he failed to point out that the brutish hordes of Wikipedia have in fact found errors in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Editors at Wikipedia humbly added the following notice:
People often claim that Wikipedia can never be as authoritative as Encyclopædia Britannica (EB). There can be no question that at the current stage, EB is vastly more complete and accurate than Wikipedia. This page is here to exhibit mistakes and omissions in EB and how they have been corrected in Wikipedia.For every error in EB noted here, of course, there are likely dozens of mistakes just as egregious in Wikipedia. Nevertheless, this page should also serve as a reminder to Wikipedians of one important advantage that the open nature of Wikipedia gives it over proprietary encyclopedias: given sufficiently many readers, every error will be spotted and corrected by someone.
While many of the changes are contentiously trivial (such as Frank Zappa’s name), the principle of the matter stands: the best is the enemy of the good.
Currently EB charges users to access the online version of the EB, whereas Wikipedia has no such fees but depends on donations, both monetary and knowledge.
While both McHenry and myself agree that Wikipedia is far from the best, or even far from the quality and accuracy of much of the EB, the market (as determined through usage) is “good” enough for vox populi. And to the dismay of McHenry, the business model for EB makes it difficult for it to compete with Wikipedia, much in the same manner that Microsoft has found it increasingly difficult charge for an arguably more user-friendly product (Windows) against a “free” product (Linux) which, to be sure has its share of quirks and bugs, but it is “good” enough to get the necessary tasks accomplished (or so says the market).
In fact, misplacing their “faith” as I have, Trillian recently added a feature called “Instant Lookup” which highlights certain keywords in an IM window, hyperlinking the user directly to a corresponding entry in Wikipedia.
Endeavors such as Wikipedia, have helped information continue down the path of decentralization and dissemination, by removing barriers to entry. Much in the same way, blogs have revolutionized the publishing industry by, for-better-and-for-worse, removing editors, committees and censors in all shapes and forms. So, just as Andrew Orlowski and others railed against the blogosphere, so to has the encyclopedia establishment struck out against Wikiphiles.
And for the record, regarding the editorial authority behind articles that appear in the EB, I would no sooner have Milton Friedman write an article on free-trade than I would have Glenn Reynolds pen the article on libertarianism.
Note: further Wikipedia criticisms addressed here. Image created by Justin Otis.