On 4/20/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com> wrote:
This is the sort of thing that drove away Larry Sanger
(in part): lack
of respect for accomplishment, diligence and solid scholarship. You try
to find some small thing to pick on, and then (illegitimately) imply
that it's representative of the whole. (I started to write an article on
[[damaging quotation]]s one time.)
To make Wikipedia really solid, SOMEBODY has to start verifying and
endorsing Article Versions. I still credit Larry Sanger as the
originator of the "sifter project", and I eagerly wait integration of
Magnus's software updates.
I've been thinking about this a few days and I've decided that I
disagree with it completely.
The best defense about Wikipedia being inaccurate is to say that it is
constantly in flux and one should take it with a grain of salt. It's a
good starting point but it can never been authoritative. This is not
really a criticism -- one should have such a critical eye with *all*
accounts of knowledge to some extent, it is just a lull in critical
faculties which causes us to think that EB articles come with
guaranteed authority.
The sifter seems like an attempt to put on a veneer of authority -- to
say, "this has been checked, it is more accurate or reliable than the
dynamic version." I think this is misleading and dangerous.
First of all, unless we have real, verified "experts" writing/editing
these siftered articles, we can't in any way pretend to paste on any
veneer of authority based in traditional models of it. And to require
that degree of authentication seems antithetical to the Wikipedia
collective philosophy, at the very least. Wikipedia's greatest claim
to authority is that each piece has been looked at by dozens of
different eyes from different backgrounds. It is a different model of
authority.
Secondly, slapping an "approved" on something removes our only
recourse to accusations of inaccuracy. At the moment we can say,
"look, we don't guarantee anything." The second we start labeling some
content as "fixed" is the second we implicitly lose that (even if we
right "no guarantees" on the bottom of things -- even EB writes that
in its disclaimers but nobody takes legalese seriously when it comes
to questions of factual accuracy).
I've seen dozens of articles which would no doubt be considered
"sifter"-worthy which I think contained gross inaccuries or poor
reprensentations. It is very easy to make something look complete if
it is not a topic which most people know all that much about and is
written in an apparently sensible way. However I don't think an
expertocracy is the way to go on this. The bonus of a "free"
encyclopedia (like "free" software) is that you are also "free" from
liability -- no guarantees provided, of course (who provides
guarantees anymore?), but also no guarantees *expected*. Adobe does
not guarantee that Photoshop will work correctly, but it is expected
that it ought to. I think people are more liberal in their assessments
of open source solutions like GIMP -- it is no surprise, and no real
sin, that it doesn't always function as expected.
Just some thoughts I had on this while thinking about free licenses,
dynamic content, and what they imply. (I believe Jimbo will be giving
a talk 'roundabouts my neck of the woods on free licensing tomorrow,
maybe I'll check it out...)
FF