[Wikipedia-l] Are we running out of sources

Mon Aug 10 08:16:36 UTC 2009

I have thought about the question below as well, but from a different angle: should we start trusting blogs more? This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is actually a complex issue. A few thoughts:

1. some blogs have matured and present well-researched information
2. some blogs are written by people who are notable
3. some blogs are more up-to-date than traditional media-outlets (c.f. Twitter bringing news faster than CNN during some of the latest crises)
4. more people write blogs than work in traditional media (c.f. Wikipedia having more editors than Encyclopaedia Britannica)
5. traditional media decrease their presence in both hot spots and cold spots and rely more and more on wire agencies like Reuters, which means that the content is more streamlined - or POV in some cases, whereas blogs potentially cover the entire spectrum.

In other words, the world is moving to the internet and if Wikipedia wants to stay ahead it will need to adapt.

This is, as I said, a complex issue: we cannot trust any old blog, and we shouldn't (see the "some blogs" comments). But let me just take one Swedish example: one of the most prominent thinkers in the Swedish debate about the internet is Oscar Swartz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Swartz). He is of course interviewed in several newspapers, and have written at least two books. But his major contributions are made on his blog (http://swartz.typepad.com/texplorer/ ), and other internet sites, not in his interviews or his books. And it will stay that way for him. He will, when he ends his career, have made a far lesser stamp in traditional media than on the internet. But nevertheless, he is an important figure in the Swedish internet culture, and any encyclopedic article about him worth its salt should acknowledge and reflect that. (By the way, I don't think I have edited his article, so this is not a way to push POV, it's just an example. I am sure there are plenty of other examples I could have mentioned.) With the current situation, can Wikipedia reflect the emerging world order?

In still other words, we may need to think this through a little bit more. Is the Internet Archive the way to go? Who decide what blogs are reliable sources? And should we try to bring in more archivists who have already wrestled with this question on saving the internet for future generations?

Best wishes,

Lennart Guldbrandsson, ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Huvudsida

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> Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2009 13:09:53 +0200
> From: lars at aronsson.se
> To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Are we running out of sources
> 
> 
> Many articles lack sources. I just happened to look at a biography 
> of a Swedish journalist, born in 1968. He received some fine 
> awards, and there is no doubt he is notable enough. But the 
> article has no sources. Ten years ago, in 1999, for a journalist 
> born in 1958, I would just look him up in the Swedish "Who's who", 
> which was published every two years. But that title seems to be 
> discontinued.  Or if another issue is ever published, it comes 
> with much longer intervals.
> 
> Such reference works go the same way as printed encyclopedias and 
> dictionaries.  For a young, ambitious journalist today, being in 
> Facebook and Linkedin (and Wikipedia) counts just as much as being 
> in Who's who did ten years ago.
> 
> Should I use the journalist's Linkedin profile as a source?  I 
> don't think that is acceptable.  All sorts of lies could hide 
> there.  And users could remove themselves from Linkedin or edit 
> their profile at any time.  Old issues of Who's who don't change, 
> they are a stable reference.
> 
> But the fact is, Who's who is/was also based on user-submitted 
> autobiographies.  The editors made a list of people who "should" 
> be in there, and sent invitations with a form where the person 
> could fill in details about family, education, career, 
> publications, awards, and hobbies.  I'm not sure how the editors 
> fact checked the entries.  Perhaps the risk of public shame was 
> enough to keep people from lying.
> 
> Printed editions have another advantage for the historian. If a 
> Swedish person "forgot" to mention in the 1945 edition that they 
> received a German medal of honor in 1938, perhaps that information 
> can be found in the 1939 edition.  In this era of Linkedin and 
> Facebook profiles, how can we ever dig up information from the 
> past, that a person wants to hide?
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> 
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