First of all, there is a separate email list for Wikimedia in Education, which this discussion is probably better suited for, but the points you make have already been considered within Wikipedia, so here's some advice on how you'd confront them.
First, people turning to it as a first reference is only a danger if people use it uncritically. Why do people use it uncritically? Because they don't understand how it got there, what its standards are etc. Hence the important role of WMUK, student societies and any other outlet in getting people to understand how Wikipedia works and maybe get involved themselves: see the sausages being made before you eat them. Note that this is more a criticism of traditional publishing than of Wikipedia because on-wiki the processes of writing, editing and review are open and public rather than hidden processes involving a small number of people.
You mention the "truth by consensus model". There is a misconception that Wikipedia uses this model, and it's a damaging misconception that we need to come out fighting against. Wikipedia doesn't presume to determine the truth: it is summarising an existing body of knowledge and making it freely accessible. Our civilization already has processes for determining the truth: experimentation, scholarship, sending probes into space and so on. Wikipedia can't do all those things, but it can consult verifiable sources and establish whether an article fairly and neutrally reflects those sources.
The lone scientist who has proven his theory (to the satisfaction of the scientific community) might not be heard, but that's the price you pay for filtering out the lone nuts. That's truth-by-consensus and it's a problem for scholarly communities, not for Wikipedia.
On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Patel, Vinesh
<vinesh.patel06@imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
What I think he is basically saying is the growth of Wikipedia is a danger. The bigger it gets, the more accurate it gets, the more people turn to it as a first reference. The truth by consensus model has drawbacks and positives (which he doesn't mention)
but perhaps the main drawback is that the lone scientist who has proven his theory but is controversial will not be heard. Or, perhaps more pertinently, the lone political perspective will certainly not be heard. So it's not just us tackling criticisms, but
really nailing what Wikipedia offers now and in the future that I think we must do while engaging HE institutions.
In terms of the society, the main aim of my previous email was to provide real clarity of the timeline we have.
Thanks,
Vinesh
Thanks for the update, Vinesh.
Agreed that Wikimedia UK needs to make educational projects one of the central planks of what we do. That's in hand- I'm at the Wikipedia in HE summit right now. Most importantly, we can't impose a change of practice from outside academia. Wikipedia needs
a network of friends, or at least open-minded practitioners, in as many different institutions and roles as possible, so your work reaching out to academics and getting Wikipedia onto the agenda of teaching meetings is a great step forward.
On the Wikiality point, I'm not sure which pithy criticism you're getting at. The paragraph you link to mentions a number of traditional criticisms of Wikipedia. I'm confident that all of them can be answered by articulating WP's existing policies and
processes. Tell us what objections you're encountering, and I can help you tackle them head-on either in individual email, WMUK's publicity channels, or specialist publicity channels for academics and librarians. Cheers,
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Patel, Vinesh
<vinesh.patel06@imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
Dear all,
After just having completed my exams and an academic year lasting 366 days, I am back to being active at Imperial College Wikisoc as their president for the coming year! However, I will also be studying for the final year of my course beginning in two weeks
and so need to finish most of my personal activity by around Jan/Feb 2012, and will be incredibly busy. Therefore it is imperative that we in the society work hard for new recruits, but also that the board and the chapter generally invest appropriate amounts
of the various resources we have in the near future. Otherwise the society will falter, because to be honest I have carried it thus far without much support from busy colleagues currently part of the society.
We have great leads in the society and need to grow them slowly enough to mature well. But in order to attract people and make our projects a success, we need to be imaginative to ENSURE our success. Wikipedia should start creating a brand in the UK that it
provides higher education resources and opportunities of the very highest quality (while recognising our place), and we need to figure out how that can be made with both top down and bottom up insights - so I urge all UK Wikipedians to join in with relevant
thoughts. and then we will have to make some decisions about how we go about this.
We will be focussing on our Campus Ambassadors program (two of us having been trained), for which we have two interested professors already, but also doing work on creating a network of editors and furthering the discussion of the relationship between Wikipedia
and higher education.
Concerning this debate, Stephen Colbert of all people came up with one of the most pithy objections that I have read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_culture#Wikiality. I think more of this kind of talk needs to be done. What may be needed is a meeting of interested parties - librarians,
universities etc. to really nail this issue (or suggest what kind of research needs to be done), in a bigger meeting than simply the London Wikipedia Academy that we previously organised
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/London_Wikipedia_Academy.
That's much information not perfectly organised, but I hope it gets out where the society is at - the purpose being that we and new student societies need to plan our structure and place in universities.
Vinesh Patel
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