The debate about Wikipedia is moving into the mainstream (e.g., Gregory Lamb of the Christian Science Monitor, Online Wikipedia is not Britannica – but it’s close). It now may be reaching more people who previously new little and cared less about what the Wikipedia was and, for them, a shared sensemaking is taking place. What’s interesting about it is how technologies move from being compared to predecessors to being evaluated on their own merit. And that process involves the shedding of much of the political and cultural baggage of the past.

George Johnson of the NYT had this to say in his commentary The Nitpicking of the Masses vs. the Authority of the Experts:

It may seem foolish to trust Wikipedia knowing I could jump right in and change the order of the planets or give the electron a positive charge. But with a worldwide web of readers looking over my shoulder, the error would quickly be corrected. Like the swarms of proofreading enzymes that monitor DNA for mutations, some tens of thousands of regular Wikipedians constantly revise and polish the growing repository of information.

There is a subtle and fleeting moment early in the introduction of new technologies when society shifts from viewing these novelties in terms of their nearest existing analog and starts seeing them for what they are: when the automobile shifted from being a less-than-dependable horse and buggy to its own identity (and Ford stopped comparing the costs of each in his advertising); the electric light shifted from a fragile and expensive gas lamp to a new power source; the telephone from a bad telegraph; TiVo from an expensive VCR. The same could now be happening not just for the Wikipedia, but for open-source software and content in general (blogs, Linux, etc…).

Johnson concludes in words reminiscent of open-source pioneer Eric Raymond (to enough eyes, all bugs are shallow):

It seems natural that over time, thousands, then millions of inexpert Wikipedians – even with an occasional saboteur in their midst – can produce a better product than a far smaller number of isolated experts ever could.

Nature Magazine weighed in on the Wikipedia debate in a recent article :

They sent 50 pairs of Wikipedia and Britannica articles on scientific topics to recognised experts and, without telling them which article came from which source, asked them to count the numbers of errors (mistakes, misleading statements or omissions). Among the 42 replies, Britannica content had an average of just under 3 errors per article whilst Wikipedia had an average of just under 4 errors — not as much difference, perhaps, as most people would expect.

Nature editors and reporters view this evidence in Wikipedia’s favor:

an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica’s coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.

I see enough ambiguity in the findings for wikipediphiliacs and wikipediphobics to continue the raging debate. And that’s a fine thing. Some doctoral student will come along in 5-10 years and have a wonderful record of how the old media reacted to the technical changes (for better or worse) that wikipedia represents.

The big question, to me: Is the Wikipedia just serving as the lightning rod for a rant against the entire blogosphere, where accuracy is traded for speed, cost, and quantity?

On Sunday, the New York Times picked up an op-ed in USA-Today and published an interesting article about the inaccuracies and maliciously un-edited nature of the Wikipedia, our premier open-source encyclopedia. The article, Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar recounts with a little glee and absolutely no sense of irony how:

ACCORDING to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, John Seigenthaler Sr. is 78 years old and the former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. But is that information, or anything else in Mr. Seigenthaler’s biography, true?

The question arises because Mr. Seigenthaler recently read about himself on Wikipedia and was shocked to learn that he “was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother Bobby.”

“Nothing was ever proven,” the biography added.

Mr. Seigenthaler discovered that the false information had been on the site for several months and that an unknown number of people had read it, and possibly posted it on or linked it to other sites.

This is another case where technology turns a relatively everyday event into a harbinger of technological doom. I’ll be the first to admit that technologies bring unintended, and often catastrophic, consequences. But this is an example of how new technologies that are no worse than old technologies managed to get blamed for crimes that, in the old ways of doing things, were just business as usual.

Worse things happen every day in the book reviews posted anonymously on Amazon (I should know). Worse still happen in the NYT Review of Books, considering the far greater damage to writers’ careers of a bad review in the NYT magazine. And of course, the irony absent this NYT report on the Wikipedia makes it seem that such a travesty of truth could never happen to the Times news organization itself (see the Wiki for Jayson Blair and Judith Miller).

As the Times reports, “Mr. Seigenthaler discovered that the false information had been on the site for several months and that an unknown number of people had read it, and possibly posted it on or linked it to other sites.” Seriously, how many people do you think saw it, or possibly posted it on their sites? Now compare this number to how many people read Judith Miller’s reports on the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction? Here a bit from the Wiki on Miller:

On May 26, 2004, a week after the U.S. government apparently severed ties with Ahmed Chalabi, a Times editorial acknowledged that some of that newspaper’s coverage in the run-up to the war had relied too heavily on Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles bent on regime change. It also regretted that “information that was controversial [was] allowed to stand unchallenged.” While the editorial rejected “blame on individual reporters,” others noted that ten of the twelve flawed stories discussed had been written or co-written by Miller.

From the glass house they live in, the NYT editorial staff should be much more careful about throwing stones at online reference material.

Personally, I happen to think the Wikipedia is one of the better things since sliced bread, as it is an incredibly useful 1st (but not last) reference tool. Where else could you get several pages of text on Lego’s, along with links to 12 other Wiki entries and 40 or so external links? Do you think Britannica pays as much attention? It only cares about the founder or Lego as part of an article on toys–though that is open only to paying members. How about M’Soft’s Encarta? It only sends me to a dictionary definition and another generic article on toys (not to mention a pop-up ad the size of my screen). And, of coruse, the great material on Jayson Blair and Judith Miller…

And, as a footnote, I find it nice that Wikipedia even includes this last bit of history on Seigenthaler:

Between May and September 2005, the Wikipedia article on Seigenthaler contained a number of inaccurate statements, including allegations he may have been “directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby,” assertions he considered “character assassination.” The statements, added by an anonymous editor and since removed, prompted Seigenthaler to write an Op-Ed in USA Today on November 29, in which he stated that “…Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool…[f]or four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin.” Seigenthaler said that he had tried to determine the identity of the anonymous editor but had been unable to do so. Seigenthaler’s article prompted a number of commentators to write about the issue and Wikipedia and the internet in general, and on December 5, Seigenthaler appeared on CNN with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.