On the limits of Wikipedia

Here's an essay I was writing that I was originally thinking of submitting to The Cornellian, but I've since had second thoughts since I can't bear to be associated with a newspaper of such ill repute (just look at it, I dare you). Is there something wrong with that? I really would like to not be part of the problem, frankly. I justify it the way Fugazi justifies not doing interviews in corporate magazines like Rolling Stone: even if I am pushing a good idea, it will just be lost in a sea of bad ideas. It's not like anyone is really clamoring to see my writing, anyway.

This is an essay about how I think Wikipedia should be taken a bit more seriously. Feel free to comment vigorously on the subject. It is definitely a debatable issue.

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Wikipedia Should be Considered a Citable Source

Like all of the most revolutionary acts of communication, from Gutenberg’s printing press onward, the open content reference web site known as Wikipedia has weathered criticisms by traditionalists and skeptics alike, its main offense being the allowance of anyone to contribute to a worldwide body of public knowledge. By anyone, that means you, me, and millions of other people that, at some point in our lives, have contributed something of value to a Wikipedia page. Almost overnight, the standard, peer-reviewed encyclopedias of the past (such as the World Book and Encyclopedia Britannica) became obsolete. To some, that posed quite a problem, but to the rest of us, this seemed like the dawn of a new and exciting age where the promise of free information (an idea preached more often than practiced) was actually coming true.

It is obvious that a new and exciting concept like Wikipedia would be greeted with the most amount of skepticism in academic circles. There are many reasons why this is, not the least among them being that it has always been the job of the professor or scientist to not accept any idea or theory without lots of evidence to back it up. For the most part, I have observed that professors, at least at Cornell College, do not believe that Wikipedia is a viable source for citation because they see it is a system fraught with problems. Cite Wikipedia in any form on an academic papers or even mention in passing that you looked at it for research, and it is likely you will be reprimanded or at least given a stern look. I would like to argue that even as I recognize that Wikipedia has certain problems, it has managed to overcome the majority of these problems in a most profound and satisfactory way. It simply doesn’t make sense that the Encyclopedia Britannica is considered an unimpeachable and unbiased source while Wikipedia isn’t. If anything, it should be the other way around, as Britannica reflects the biases of a privileged elite while Wikipedia allows anyone, regardless of age, creed, or class, to contribute. For instance, the section on Ludwig Von Beethoven in Britannica might have a lot about the volume and complexity of Beethoven’s works, but would it mention Abel Gance’s 1936 film Un grand amour de Beethoven? No it doesn’t, but Wikipedia does.

As mentioned before, most criticisms of Wikipedia have to do with its open-forum format, which leads many to believe that it’s a site filled with inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and an emphasis on what is perceived on popular, “low” culture over more high-minded intellectual pursuits. The last point is for cultural critics far smarter than myself to argue about, but for now, it should be noted that these inaccuracies and inconsistencies aren’t as plentiful as one might think, for the reason that Wikipedia, like any good system of ideas, has its checks and balances. As you read this sentence, thousands upon thousands of administrators are patrolling recent changes to the site, verifying claims and references, and amending or even deleting these pages according to their best judgments. These administrators were chosen to have these powers as a result of the amount of time and attention each made towards making Wikipedia as unbiased and accurate as it could be. Administrators in turn choose more administrators, many of whom specialize in certain fields and become administrators of certain areas (subcategories often referred to as “WikiProjects”). These administrators are also capable of locking down articles in the event that they become frequently vandalized, and preventing users from making edits until it is deemed safe again.

Any system that rewards hard and copious amounts of work with special privileges is often referred to in a knee-jerk fashion as intrinsically American, as Wikipedia has, although I would be quick to point out that Wikipedia’s idea of governing is hardly democratic, as there is a clear divide between the normal Wikipedia editor like myself and the administrator, and while administrators are capable of checking each other, normal editors cannot easily check the power of administrators. If anything, it is, as one Wikipedia administrator explained, “an anarchy with gang rule.” While I would be loathe to say that this school of thought breeds great and lasting nations, it seems that in the realm of free information dissemination, nothing could be more perfect. Who better to charge with the task of spreading knowledge than the most knowledgeable, or at the very least the most interested?

In my experience, and I have tested this, any attempt at vandalism on Wikipedia won’t last very long. At this point in Wikipedia’s short life-span, there is always the slight possibility that a piece of information is incorrect, but any amount of double-checking on the part of the researcher would be 99% likely to set the story straight. Try it out yourself: make some specious claim on some article and so how long it takes to be removed. It’s quite a fast process. More difficult to reconcile are the claims that articles on Wikipedia are, while not technically inaccurate, certainly biased in one way or another. Most of the times this bias can be dealt with on the individual article “Discussion” pages, but it had come to the point where some felt they were unable to get their viewpoint across no matter how much editing they tried to do. Andrew Schlafly, son of anti-ERA activist Phyllis Schlafly, was so incensed by the fact that Wikipedia didn’t considered the Bible to be an unimpeachable historical document that he created his own homemade wiki: Conservapedia. On Conservapedia, you could find unbiased articles on, for instance, “The Gay Bomb,” an aphrodisiac chemical weapon that could turn its populace into homosexuals (and was apparently proposed by the Clinton administration). A more substantive level of criticism has been aimed towards documented cases of members of congress and special interest groups alike paying writers to make their Wikipedia pages paint them in a kinder light. This is an egregious offense, and one that is notoriously difficult to regulate due to the amount of anonymity users are allowed. However, I have noticed that administrators do a good enough amount of patrolling to make this almost a moot point.

I’m aware of these limitations, so I propose that in citing Wikipedia articles, as we would with citing anything else, we should put limitations on what is acceptable. My idea would be this: In order to be considered a citable source, an article must have been considered an acceptable member of at least one of the many hundred “WikiProject” groups. So, for instance, if you are citing something about a novel, you would have to make sure that the article was part of “WikiProject Books,” which can be seen by viewing the "Discussion" page at the top of the article. If it doesn’t belong to any group, it shouldn’t be cited. Additionally, the article being considered should be rated at least above “stub-class” on Wikipedia’s internal quality scale (a ranking usually determined by committee). These criteria make the level of quality and accuracy easy to verify by both student and professor. And, in case a professor has any lingering doubts about a certain statement or citation (and he or she always should), Wikipedia makes it very easy to search through its edit history, so it would be easy to observe whether or not the information existed in the first place.

I know that this is not an issue that professors or students choose to deal with very often, and it is true that there is often no need to cite Wikipedia, as it traffics in public knowledge, which in most cases doesn’t need to be cited. However, the option must exist. There are so many exciting and interesting things about Wikipedia, among them: the fact that spread of information is no longer confined to an elite group; that the notions of “high” and “low” culture are being shown to be patently false and justly obliterated; and, perhaps most importantly, that the internet is capable of providing us with an exponential amount of material more detailed and diverse than all the public libraries in the world combined. It would be a shame to see it rejected on college campuses simply because it is used too much.

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P.S. Does anyone know how to do cuts, like livejournal cuts?