On 20/09/2010 04:21, Robert S. Horning wrote:
On 09/19/2010 06:52 PM, wiki-list(a)phizz.demon.co.uk
wrote:
On 20/09/2010 00:26, Robert S. Horning wrote:
I'm not entirely sure how accurate this is, so I'm just making a
raw conjecture here that is completely unsupported by facts other
than perhaps by general observations:
Is it possible that the problem with the humanities-related
articles on Wikipedia has more to do with the lack of an existing
culture of "copyleft" or public domain collaboration? It has
taken literally decades of effort that go back even a couple of
decades earlier of similar efforts to put together what is today
the "open source movement" that has produced things like Linux,
the GNU tools, and software like Apache. Wikipedia is a product
of this environment too, where many of those who have
participated in developing open source software don't hesitate to
at least add a couple of paragraphs to Wikipedia.
Linux, Apache, and the GNU Tools were the work of a handful of
people. Others have come along and added a bit here or there or
fixed something or other but I bet that if I were to look at the
core source code for Emacs to day it wouldn't be that much
different from when I worked on it 20 years ago.
Software changes either work or they don't and any change ought to
be testable to demonstrate that it adds some new feature or fixes
something broken. But there is a problem with software changes in
that most changes tend to degrade the overall quality of the
product in some way. Overtime, unless someone steps in and does a
rewrite the code becomes a mess, and it happened one change at a
time.
The same is true of wikipedia articles, edit by edit, they tend to
degrade. There comes a point when they are 'done' and they knob
polishers need to be told to bugger off and leave them alone.
While I appreciate extending the analogy, you are missing my point
here. Geeks have been used to the philosophy of collaboratively
written documents (including software) for quite some time and this
was ingrained into at least a significant sub-set of technologically
minded people for quite some time. It is this culture of sharing
with one another and having no stigma of sharing your work and
letting potentially millions of others poke at your work, tweak it or
even trash it.
What?????
The chances of you or I being able to just chance the core code of Linux
is zip, nada, ain't' gonna happen matey. Before anything goes back its
going to have to have passed a whole load of tests, and it will be
reviewed by experts in the code/subject area. The Open source
software that matters is tightly controlled.
It isn't just this software but the tens of
thousands of other
applications that have been built and shared with the world.
Wikipedia was formed from this community where sharing this kind of
information was even a second nature. Indeed it has been encouraged
for people of a technical nature to share the information they know
with one another.
What I'm trying to point out is that a similar sub-culture within
the community that works on arts and literature is such a minority
that you might as well not really pay attention to it. Certainly
academia isn't embracing Wikipedia for multiple reasons. That may be
part of it as those in an academic situation tend to be a minority in
technical fields but tend to dominate those with studies in the
humanities. They are also hesitant to work collaboratively and even
when that happens it tends to be very small groups... not groups of
dozens or hundreds involved. A paper on physics may have hundreds of
co-authors, but a similar academic paper on Greek Mythology may only
have a couple authors or a single author. This is a cultural
difference that can't be understated.
When you have 100s of authors tweaking and adding stuff you tend to end
up with at best a turgid mess. Which is why people are saying that the
articles are worstening over time.
Gerard says that the mathematics were improved by a handful of people
getting together and fixing the mess. Back in 2006/7 it was awful and
the physics was even worse. If it ain't been locked down the janitors
will degrade their work with minor tweaks soon as night follows day.