3 ms·

Whilst my posts on this subject are all over the place here. I'm not arguing that Wikipedia is not useful, nor impressive, nor successful. It is all of these.

by wbhart 15y ago

Whilst my posts on this subject are all over the place here. I'm not arguing that Wikipedia is not useful, nor impressive, nor successful. It is all of these. Nor am I suggesting that having "Dr" in front of your name should give you more power on Wikipedia. What I am alleging is that Wikipedia has a problem with plagiarism, with incorrect information and it has not brought a technological solution to the very difficult problem of verifying information in technical areas (I have also alleged elsewhere that Wikipedia has a problem with deletionism). The general Wikipedia approach works extremely well for general knowledge, but badly, IMHO, with specialised knowledge. For that reason, some academics prefer to devote their time to writing primary peer reviewed articles (the corpus of which is vast compared to Wikipedia, and much more successful if quantity and quality is the metric). As I have already noted, there are many academics who do spend time adding to Wikipedia. They are not wrong to do so. But I personally see limitations to the approach, with no workable solution, technological or otherwise, in sight.

tptacek 15y ago
I understood the point you were making. I was attempting to add to it, saying that these are issues that are going to be especially annoying for academics, who are accustomed to different norms (in particular, respect for expertise earned through study and publication). Academics like yourself are much better off writing primary and secondary sources outside the encyclopedia. It is the goal of the encyclopedia to aggregate and promote primary and secondary sources. It is not the goal of the encyclopedia to itself be the authoritative source for information on any given topic. You will find that having written even a simple survey paper that your ideas and critiques are far more readily incorporated into WP than by bloodying your forehead against the brick wall of other editors following what they know to be well-intentioned and, empirically, effective rules.
- wbhart 15y ago
  At the risk of carrying on a conversation... I would like to reply to that. I certainly agree with that and appreciate your clarification. However, what is happening is that Wikipedia is attempting to deal with very technical topics. As such there is a great divide between the techniques that are empirically observed to successfully collate general knowledge and the tried and tested techniques, developed over hundreds and even thousands of years for collating technical knowledge. Precisely because academics have so little time to communicate their knowledge to nontechnical audiences there is a dire need for an approach that can successfully deal with this very difficult problem. My claim is that the wikipedia approach is so far not as successful in this area. On forums where ignorance is king, I frequently advocate the use of Wikipedia to inform. Both aspects need to be understood. There are many people for whom Wikipedia should be a tremendously important tool. In forums like this, I emphasise the other side of things. The Wikipedia approach has its limitations as a means of disseminating precise and technical information.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    Of course Wikipedia is limited for technical topics: it's limited by the quality and accessibility of primary and secondary sources. The way to improve WP's coverage of highly technical topics is to generate credible, reliable, accessible source material for it to incorporate. This is the great thing about the Internet, and it's something WP management has been saying for years and years. Start your own wiki. Limit it to experts. Make it an amazing source. Wikipedia can then cite it, and use its content to resolve disputes and correct mistakes in its sourcing.
    - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
      Arxiv has existed for a long time, and yet Wikipedia coverage of MSc-level math is pretty awful, and coverage of research math seems to be mostly nonexistent. eprint.iacr.org and cryptography: maybe a little better, but not that much. Wikipedia needs "popularized" knowledge, to some extent, not just primary sources. Experts probably don't have a use for those resources, though.
      - tptacek 15y ago
        You're doing a better job than I did of explaining the gap in available sources that experts could address to improve WP. The point I hope I'm making, though, is that the improvement needs to happen outside Wikipedia. The experts can't directly be duking it out on WP pages as their journal articles get published.
        JoachimSchipper 15y ago
        Definitely. But you're suggesting a real change: the current model is researchers -> papers -> popularizers -> books -> science journalists -> articles -> Wikipedia editors -> Wikipedia, or something like that. Reducing this to researchers -> papers + wiki -> Wikipedia editors -> Wikipedia would definitely improve accuracy, but I think both sides would need to learn a lot about the other to make it work. There are benefits to that, but I don't see it happening.

by wbhart 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago

I understood the point you were making. I was attempting to add to it, saying that these are issues that are going to be especially annoying for academics, who are accustomed to different norms (in particular, respect for expertise earned through study and publication). Academics like yourself are much better off writing primary and secondary sources outside the encyclopedia. It is the goal of the encyclopedia to aggregate and promote primary and secondary sources. It is not the goal of the encyclopedia to itself be the authoritative source for information on any given topic. You will find that having written even a simple survey paper that your ideas and critiques are far more readily incorporated into WP than by bloodying your forehead against the brick wall of other editors following what they know to be well-intentioned and, empirically, effective rules.

wbhart 15y ago
At the risk of carrying on a conversation... I would like to reply to that. I certainly agree with that and appreciate your clarification. However, what is happening is that Wikipedia is attempting to deal with very technical topics. As such there is a great divide between the techniques that are empirically observed to successfully collate general knowledge and the tried and tested techniques, developed over hundreds and even thousands of years for collating technical knowledge. Precisely because academics have so little time to communicate their knowledge to nontechnical audiences there is a dire need for an approach that can successfully deal with this very difficult problem. My claim is that the wikipedia approach is so far not as successful in this area. On forums where ignorance is king, I frequently advocate the use of Wikipedia to inform. Both aspects need to be understood. There are many people for whom Wikipedia should be a tremendously important tool. In forums like this, I emphasise the other side of things. The Wikipedia approach has its limitations as a means of disseminating precise and technical information.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Of course Wikipedia is limited for technical topics: it's limited by the quality and accessibility of primary and secondary sources. The way to improve WP's coverage of highly technical topics is to generate credible, reliable, accessible source material for it to incorporate. This is the great thing about the Internet, and it's something WP management has been saying for years and years. Start your own wiki. Limit it to experts. Make it an amazing source. Wikipedia can then cite it, and use its content to resolve disputes and correct mistakes in its sourcing.
  - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
    Arxiv has existed for a long time, and yet Wikipedia coverage of MSc-level math is pretty awful, and coverage of research math seems to be mostly nonexistent. eprint.iacr.org and cryptography: maybe a little better, but not that much. Wikipedia needs "popularized" knowledge, to some extent, not just primary sources. Experts probably don't have a use for those resources, though.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      You're doing a better job than I did of explaining the gap in available sources that experts could address to improve WP. The point I hope I'm making, though, is that the improvement needs to happen outside Wikipedia. The experts can't directly be duking it out on WP pages as their journal articles get published.
      - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
        Definitely. But you're suggesting a real change: the current model is researchers -> papers -> popularizers -> books -> science journalists -> articles -> Wikipedia editors -> Wikipedia, or something like that. Reducing this to researchers -> papers + wiki -> Wikipedia editors -> Wikipedia would definitely improve accuracy, but I think both sides would need to learn a lot about the other to make it work. There are benefits to that, but I don't see it happening.