[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

[Brown, Darin]

> Most non-user academics are going to miss the point about hypertext.  An
> area of WP with good navigation can get you in an hour what might cost a
> week of a well-appointed library.

Very true. One thing I never understand when I hear academics (or esp.
librarians) ragging on wikipedia is the notion that the only use of an
information resource is as a citation for a paper or as a hard reference to
verify something. This makes little sense, since I *know* this isn't the
only thing they use information resources for.

One of the most common uses I have for wikipedia is getting a quick,
readable overview of a topic or term which I'm unfamiliar with. The result
may not be ideal or perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than googling
or trying to wander the stacks aimlessly. Esp. in fields totally unrelated
to training. Imagine you're a math person reading something about painting
or chemistry or history, something slightly above mass popular accounts. You
come to a topic or term that is unfamiliar, so that you can't read on
without seriously losing what is being said. If you try to go to the stacks
to figure it out, you're left with (a) incomprehensible specialist journals,
(b) specialist encyclopedias, (c) textbooks that are either poorly written
or that assume prerequisite knowledge, or (d) mass popular accounts that
assume you're completely ignorant of everything and give too few details or
external references. Even on areas close to research area, it's easy to just
be led on a wild-goose chase through research papers, lecture notes, and GTM
books.

(E.g., read research paper A, come to term X you don't understand, be led to
previous papers B and C, which still don't explain the term or definition
but give a reference to textbooks D, E, and F. But D assumes you've already
read D-prequel by the same author, E has a variant presentation that
requires reading alternate but equivalent account G, and F assumes you've
already familiar with problems Y and Z from another area of math. Pretty
soon, you've got photocopies of 3 or 4 papers, you've checked out half a
dozen monograph or books, but a week later, you still can't explain the damn
thing to yourself or anyone else in your own words.)

I have already used the math part of wikipedia to learn the basics of a
number of topics which would have taken me far more time to sort through at
the stacks.

> But only academics who actually remember
> the mazy, hazy grad student days  of bombardment by things about which one
> should already know will rate that aspect.

Actually remember? I'm still trying to actively forget!! :)

As an observation, shouldn't this really be life-long activity, though?
Hardly anyone can keep up with the amount of stuff being published today.
(Meaning, shouldn't "a sense of bombardment by things about which you should
already know", be a normal part of scholarship?)

> Most popularizing academics will find the tone of WP rather subdued.
(This
> is a good thing.  We have no need to do boosterism. )

At the same time, don't most academics find the tone of most popularizations
rather hypomanic?

darin