[WikiEN-l] Re: Nupedia?

[Sheldon Rampton]

I wrote:

>  > Until the 19th century, the scientific system was truly open to
>  > anyone, and credentials didn't matter much.

And Ray Saintonge responded:

>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

I think Ray has confused "science" with "religion." The "heresy of 
Galileo" was not a clash between opposing scientists. It was a clash 
between science and religious dogma, in which religious dogma won by 
virtue of its ability to imprison, torture and kill dissenters. 
Galileo capitulated to the Catholic Church rather than suffer these 
violent consequences. The "scientific system" to which I am referring 
only emerged as religious authorities lost their power to engage in 
this kind of repression, and it did indeed emerge much like the 
Wikipedia did, as a system for the accumulation of knowledge in which 
credentials had little significance. The Royal Society for the 
Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1660 as England's 
official scientific society, drew much of its inspiration from Sir 
Francis Bacon's belief that scientific knowledge should come from all 
quarters and walks of life. At the time of the society's charter, two 
thirds of its members were interested amateurs rather than full-time 
scientists. Rather than narrow specialists, scientists of the period 
were wide-ranging intellectuals interested in all of the ideas of the 
day, from physics to theology. They combined passion for knowledge 
with practical interests in commerce, agriculture, and industry. "We 
find noble rarities to be every day given in," wrote Bishop Sprat, 
the first historian of the Society, "not only by the hands of the 
learned, but from the shops of mechanics, voyages of merchants, 
ploughs of husbandmen, gardens of gentlemen." That description sounds 
uncommonly similar to the description that someone could write of the 
Wikipedia today.

Of course, there were limitations to the idea of science being open 
to anyone. In the 1700s, literacy was rare and most people were too 
preoccupied with daily survival to engage in scientific dabbling or 
publishing. Here too, though, there is a parallel to the Wikipedia. 
There are no _formal_ barriers to participation in the Wikipedia, but 
in practice only people with sufficient time and access to the 
Internet are able to contribute, which currently excludes most of the 
world's population. (Of course, that's not the fault of the 
Wikipedia.)

Ray also wrote:

>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.

I don't think there is any evidence showing that reliable access to 
accurate information dulls anyone's critical thinking faculties. In 
any case, this problem is merely theoretical for the time being, 
since the Wikipedia hasn't reached that level yet.

>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.

I don't understand your reasoning here. Why can't the 
"undifferentiated masses" on Wikipedia intentionally recruit the 
advice of people who are currently "the acknowledged experts"? In the 
rest of the real world, people do this all the time. When we hire a 
physician or an attorney or an architect, most of us go to people who 
have training, certification and specialized knowledge in those 
fields. Just as I don't need to be a surgeon myself in order to find 
a good one to take out my appendix, the "undifferentiated masses" on 
Wikipedia don't need expertise in everything in order to identify and 
recruit individuals who _do_ have that expertise. Of course, this 
system won't be error-proof. (Nothing in this world ever is.) 
However, it might help improve the quality and reliability of 
information presented here.

I wrote:

>  > In the future, we may want to have some volunteer committees:
[SNIP]
>  > 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.

Ray responded:

>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.

I realize that the idea of giving "binding" authority to such a 
committee is bound to raise concerns, and perhaps I'm thinking too 
far into the future. The question of whether and when to delegate 
such authority can only be answered after committees of this type 
already exist and have been functioning for awhile in a purely 
advisory role. I think that any such binding authority should be 
given only after careful deliberation, and those in whom it is 
entrusted should use it with caution and restraint. However, I think 
it is a mistake to imagine that no one here ever has binding 
authority over anyone else. We already have a system in place of 
sysops who exert such authority, acting under the all-seeing gaze of 
Jimbo, our Philosopher King. Just as sysops can step in now to curb 
edit wars and vandalism, I think there could be a place in the future 
for specialized expert committees to perform similar functions.
-- 
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
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