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How Wikipedia uses facts-about-facts to do the impossible

My latest Make: column, "Shortcut to Omniscience," talks about the cognitive shift that Wikipedians undergo in order to collaboratively write an encyclopedia, and how that kind of fundamental, subtle change enables networked groups of people to do things that were previously considered impossible.

Here's the thing about expertise: it's hard to define. It may be
possible for a small group of relatively homogenous people to agree on
who is and isn't an expert, but getting millions of people to do so is
practically impossible. The Britannica uses a learned editorial board to
decide who will write its entries and who will review them.

Wikipedia turns this on its head by saying, essentially, *Anyone can
write our entries but those entries should consist of material cited
from reliable sources.* While the Britannica says, *These facts are
true*, Wikipedia says, *It is true that these facts were reported by
these sources*. The Britannica contains facts, Wikipedia contains facts
about facts.

Shortcut to Omniscience

6 Responses to “How Wikipedia uses facts-about-facts to do the impossible”

1. Trollface says:

   November 26, 2009 at 12:15 am

   What about the deletionists, and the fact that it's getting more and more difficult to post anything new to Wikipedia, with the self appointed Notability Police?
2. Cory Doctorow says:

   November 26, 2009 at 12:17 am

   Stipulating to this (though it's facts not in evidence), what does it have to do with the article?
3. Deepthiw says:

   November 26, 2009 at 9:55 am

   But it sounds like Wikipedia is moving away from this model by collaborating with "experts" to write more content in the future. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8379566.stm Also, while I agree the main difference between Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is that they include citations as a way to prove the credibility of the article, I think you're giving experts more of a mystical authority than they deserve. "Experts" traditionally build their reputations by engaging in research techniques that include rigorous citation. And in soliciting articles, encyclopedias use these experts assuming that those citations will be used to write the articles, if not included. So, in your example, the Britannica includes facts that should be able to be found by independent researchers in other places. The citations may be left out in the final edition, but they should have been there from the first version of the entry.
4. Good News: Wikipedia not in decline | Praeter Naturam says:

   November 27, 2009 at 4:28 am

   [...] How Wikipedia uses facts-about-facts to do the impossible (craphound.com) [...]
5. Jonty City says:

   November 28, 2009 at 12:40 pm

   This would be in the natural order of things:
   Small, flexible organizations become successful, grow, and then become the rigid, credentialist creatures they once contradicted, thereby creating a need and opportunity for a new child to be born.

   We should be looking out for the "next" wikipedia.
6. Croydonslacker says:

   November 30, 2009 at 8:07 am

   So what you are saying is that Wikipedia suceeds because it redefines what an encyclopedia is to being a curated list of weblinks?

   I can remember a distant time when these were supposed to be big business on the internet, right before Google killed them off. In a pleasing example of circularity pages from this one are now as often as not the number one result returned by a google search.

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