Sheldon Rampton wrote:
I think the way forward from here is to emulate the
systems used in
scientific peer review and publishing. What makes Wikipedia work, in
my opinion, is that is already emulates the model by which scientific
knowledge has been able to accumulate: an "information commons" to
which anyone can contribute and which anyone can use.
The issue that faces us is that of trying to find a dynamic equilibrium
between two opposing epistemologies. The peer review approach tends to
be exclusionist, and although it's fine to be critical of the hypotheses
that are presented, there still needs to be latitude for them to be
presented in the first place without fear that they will be rejected
before they ae tested.
Until the 19th century, the scientific system was
truly open to
anyone, and credentials didn't matter much. As the quality and
quantity of scientific information increased and its power to
transform technology and society became evident, the stakes got higher
and peer review entered the system as a way of trying to determine
which scientific projects should be funded and considered reliable.
Was it really open to anyone? The credentials were different but they
still mattered. As long as the means for the mass communication of
scientific information were not there, the credentials of the pulpit
were the ones that mattered. The heresies of a Galileo were not within
the grasp of the common man; there was no gavel to gavel newspaper
coverage of his trial
Right now Wikipedia is a hobby for most of the people
who use it,
which places it in a position analogous to the days when science was
the hobby of gentleman tinkerers. I don't think many people right now
are particularly using Wikipedia as part of their job or in any other
context where they absolutely need to rely on its accuracy. When I
personally look things up on Wikipedia, for example, I don't have to
rely on its accuracy because there are other information sources that
I can use to double-check anything I find here. If its reliability
becomes more important to users, people will begin to develop more
deliberate procedures for fact-checking and credentialing.
There's a problem when a source of information becomes too reliable.
People become lazy; they stop looking critically at the text in front
of them; they begin to feel that they don't need to double-check.
One way that Wikipedia could incorporate peer review
would be to
develop its own panels of accredited experts on various topics. Right
now users are a largely undifferentiated mass. There are some
differences between anonymous IP users, registered users and sysops,
but those differences merely reflect different permission settings in
the software and don't correspond to any distinctions in terms of
individuals' actual expertise in specific fields.
Where are these "accredited experts" going to come from. The paradox is
that the peers who do the peer review for the members of the
undifferentiated masses cannot come from what are now the acknowledged
experts. The peer review must come from other members of the
undifferentiated masses. Who ever said that the democratization of
knowledge would be any less messy than the democratization of political
institutions?
In the future, we may want to have some volunteer
committees: a
science committee, a history committee, a humanities committee and so
forth. These could be further differentiated over time as need be. For
example, there could be science subcommittees in areas such as
biochemistry or particle physics. Individuals with credentials and
expertise in each field could be invited to serve. Suppose, for
example, the science committee consisted of several Nobel laureates
and other leading scientists. If a dispute arose over a particular
article, the committee would be invited to mediate and render an
opinion, and if mediation alone was insufficient to resolve the
dispute, the committee could even be given authority to impose a
binding decision.
Perish the thought! Pontifical truth committees! When they mediate and
render an opinion it is still just an opinion, and it may therby have
greater weight, but please, no binding decisions. Promoting an
atmosphere of critical thinking would be a much greater accomplishment.
All of these changes would consist of social
self-organization of
Wikipedia users. They wouldn't entail or require modifications of the
software.
Of course it's a social problen, and not a software problem.
Ec