WIKIALITY

Thanks, DS.

“The power of the community to decide, of course, asks us to reexamine what we mean when we say that something is ‘true.’ We tend to think of truth as something that resides in the world. The fact that two plus two equals four is written in the stars-we merely discovered it. But Wikipedia suggests a different theory of truth. Just think about the way we learn what words mean. Generally speaking, we do so by listening to other people (our parents, first). Since we want to communicate with them (after all, they feed us), we use the words in the same way they do. Wikipedia says judgments of truth and falsehood work the same way. The community decides that two plus two equals four the same way it decides what an apple is: by consensus. Yes, that means that is the community changes its and decides that two plus two equals five, then two plus two does equal five. The community isn’t likely to do such an absurd or useless thing, but it has the ability.”

-From “The Hive”, The Atlantic, September 2006

Discussions of Wikipedia have become increasingly confused and confusing in popular discussions, thanks in no small part to Steven Colbert. But Wikipedia has always been clear and concise about its own position relative to the ‘truth’.

From Wikipedia in eight words

Facts: Wikipedia contains facts, not opinions, and not original research. Since any opinion of note has been expressed by some person or group of people, we do not try to decide or claim that an opinion is “true” or “false”. We state instead, neutrally and factually, which people hold what views, and allow the facts to speak for themselves.

Wikipedia, I think rightly and as any honest encyclopedia should, does not claim to pronouce the truth or to have any priviledged access to the truth. And, as DS points out, the Atlantic is being philosophically sloppy by thinking that the content on Wikipedia has anything to do with the truth. Colbert might like truthiness, but he doesn’t care for facts. But facts, and not the truth, is really the only thing Wikipedia can reasonably be committed to.

The more interesting philosophical question is, I think, the question of how consensus relates to accuracy. Notice that Wikipedia doesn’t make any claims to accuracy either, but independent and reputable sources have made some perhaps surprising assessments of Wikipedia’s accuracy. Most notably, Nature’s December 2005 analysis of Wikipedia, as compared to Britannica, concluded as follows:

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three

Not exactly glowing praise, but its far from condemnation.

The upshot of all this, and what Wikipedia enthusiasts like myself are most impressed with, is what seems to be the conclusion of the great Wiki experiment. Although at any one time the accuracy of a Wikipedia entry is debatable, over the long run consensus approaches accuracy comparable to that of experts. Given enough interested parties, and the means for raising, debating, and settling disputes in a dynamic and democratic fashion, the resulting consensus is nearly as trustworthy as any other source.

Thus, Wikipedia ends up plugging the infamous authority gap. I think that is what The Atlantic was trying to get at. Its especially unfortunate that The Atlantic makes this mistake, given its detailed and interesting discussion of Sanger’s struggle to retain authority over the encyclopedia. Wikipedia isn’t a truth-maker, but it has become a defacto authority on any given topic. It is worrisome because the authority seems to rest on whoever cares enough to edit an article, and by God that could be anyone.

But the response to this worry should be obvious: no, in fact, it isn’t just anyone editing the articles, because they are always doing it within the Wikipedia system, which includes the editing guidelines and the community that enforces those policies. In other words, Wikipedia isn’t a chaotic, unpredictable, and untrustworthy source. It is, in fact, rather stable and reliable, especially over the long run. The good articles are good because they have been rolled around in the system long enough to be polished. Its not entirely trustworthy, but it is just about as good as any other encyclopedia article.

Besides, science works by consensus anyway. It is horribly ironic that the Atlantic is writing this article in the middle of a huge debate about the status of Pluto as a planet. I mean, how else is this supposed to work, short of divine revelation? Just because this is being decided on the Internet doesn’t make it special in any way. On that note, I’ll let Douglas Adams have the last word.

Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust – of course you can’t, it’s just people talking – but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV – a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.