Generally, Wikipedia is something malicious especially to the academic field. Some sceptical academic scholars also made remarks of how Wikipedia can be deleterious to our sphere of human knowledge. The short essay below is my university assignment that briefly delineates and explains my standpoint in regard to those criticisms made. If you are interested, please read it with your pleasure.
(Note: Do not cite this essay article. It is not peer reviewed.)
(Note: Do not cite this essay article. It is not peer reviewed.)
Introduction
A general overview
Since the creation and inception of Wikipedia in the year of 2001, the website notably mimics the traditional form of encyclopedia electronically over the internet with over a hundred of thousands of articles online, thus has attracted more than just a million of viewers in the United State alone.
The etymology of the portmanteau - “Wikipedia”, was originally coined by a co-founder, Larry Sanger, which “wiki” refers to the meaning of “quick” in Hawaiian language - a collaborative effort involving multiple users over the web whereas the latter half “pedia” is derived from the word “encyclopedia” (Sauers 2009). The operation of Wikipedia primarily stems from the work of open source, where thousands of volunteers participate in the editing or creation of new articles and in which leading to articles with multiple authors with anonymous identities. However, this also led to claims or statement of the anonymous authors bearing no responsibilities at all. In addition, reliability, credibility and accuracy of contents attracted wide criticisms from academics of all fields, chiefly stems from the problem of open source; hence the legitimacy and authority have been questioned (Sauers 2009).
John D. Ebert (2011) wrote an article extensively, named “Wikipedia; or, The Catastrophe of Knowledge” as he profoundly disagree the existence of Wikipedia rooted from the problems of the above mentioned. He summarized that, Wikipedia could possibly create a catastrophe within the sphere of episteme, a knowledge system that is too overly dependent upon the electronic web can be vanished within seconds, if the system is ever unplugged; In retrospect of the past, the discovery and creation of knowledge were ordinarily recorded on something that was “concrete” or tangible, which lasts a very long time or, in perpetuity according to the methods of recording since the civilization; he then concluded the article with provocative writing style, that the feebleness and deterioration of intellectual knowledge among the culture of humans could have a site like Wikipedia proliferate and flourish. In response to his article, this essay attempts to disagree and argue against the point of “catastrophe” raised by Ebert with the substantiation of other literatures.
“The sum of all human knowledge”
In tracing back to the ancient time, signs of evidence have indicated that humans were ardent in creating a collection of knowledge on all academic fields from every corner of the world; and the aim of such mission was to revolutionize the education and that every person should have free access. Initially, the great library of Alexandria started the first aim of completion for the Encyclopedia compendium; however, it was only written in Greek and was not universal. Ming Dynasty (around the period of 1403) from the ancient China also had a major attempt. The then emperor, Yongle, commissioned his team to create a multi-volume of compendium. Alas, all volumes were then destroyed and disappeared. The creation of the “Permanent World Encyclopedia” was also proposed in the contemporary history. As proposed by H.G Wells during the great depression in the 1930s, he had faith into producing a universal yet inexpensive encyclopedia with the then cutting-edge technology – microfilm, as long as academic elites put aside their national interests (O’Sullivan 2009).
The ambition has retained in the contemporary age. With the aid of current technology, there were also several attempts to build a worldwide encyclopedia that reaches every single person on the planet; however, most were not as successful and flourish as Wikipedia today. The mission statement of Wikimedia Foundation, the governing body of Wikipedia and its sister projects, proclaims its objective and purpose:
“…to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally… The foundation will make and keep useful information from its project available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity” (Wikimedia Foundation)
Overall, the sum of knowledge gives right to people to gain the concepts and ideas pertaining to all educational fields; rendering the rights for people to synthesize them and think through in order to gain the understanding. In short, it is the right for one to acquire the sum that enables one to learn most concepts in the most efficient way without hassles.
Democratization of knowledge
As the Internet and modern technology thrive, the trajectory of democratization and decentralization of knowledge emerges and thus marks the new dawn of free flow and exchange of knowledge amongst the world. Knowledge now not only confines to a group of academics and elites, but also decentralizes to the group located at the lower stratum - that is, the ordinary / lay people; and certainly, Wikipedia plays a vital role as a mediator. However, the platform introduced a rather peculiar practice to the community – that is, the new function of “encyclopedic” system permits people, in anonymity, and with little expertise in related academic fields, to comment on topics of all range which this could be done without high gatekeeping process. Nevertheless, O’Sullivan (2009) further wrote in regard to the advantages and benefits of the inception of Wikipedia for humans in the contemporary world:
“the digital revolution in communications, and in particular the Internet, has on balance vastly increased access to knowledge, and speeded up the flows of information in and out of people’s minds, and Wikipedia surely plays an important part here. If knowledge is indeed power, then we are perhaps witnessing the embryonic beginnings of a massive decentring of power.” (p.79)
Hence, the aim of revolutionizing the encyclopedia cannot and should not be disputed for the well being of individuals, and inarguably, the site constructively leads the trend of decentralization in the sphere of knowledge circulation, ultimately bringing knowledge (or information) to ordinary people in every corner of the world.
The “Wisdom of Crowds”
Furthermore, by reinforcing the decentralization in knowledge, we may also see the emergence of phenomenon - the “wisdom of crowds”. As James Surowiecki (2005) wrote, although when men are grouped in herds may not be able to necessarily bring out the sense of rational thinking occasionally, they are all different when asking groups regarding matters of general interest. This therefore assumes that, collective intelligence will be intelligently more superior then that of one thinks as an isolated person. Surowiecki then substantiated his postulate with an example at the beginning with an insight as to how a group is operated– a previously popular TV show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. In the TV game show, it was that group intelligence always won against the individual intelligence; and the gimmick of the TV show structure is, every contestant is offered three types of assistance whenever he / she finds difficulty when answering the question - namely, the fifty-fifty (removal of two incorrect answers), the telephone to family, relatives or friends (which the contestant selects the best person to answer the challenging question) and assistance of spectators in the TV studio (Surowiecki 2005). Particularly to the crowds of spectators (which the crowd was branded “experts” subsequently), there were always signs of outperforming and prevailing the individuals when it comes to answering questions, though there was also a minority of people who answered differently. In summing up, the underlying thesis in Surowiecki’s work is that, he implicitly claims the accuracy conclusion made by crowds is as high when comparing with a smart individual equipped with their expertise. Thus, the same logic can merely apply to Wikipedia community. It is the overwhelming majority of Wikipedians to perform housekeeping tasks and contribute their works in the most accurate form.
Conclusion
Wikipedia, overall, creates a collaborative culture that vastly distinguished from the traditional culture of collaboration in the creation of Encyclopedia, allowing users to do ad hoc editing as well as allowing knowledge to be circulated rapidly to every individual globally. However, by countering the argument of “intellectually senile”, Ebert made a paradoxical argument in my point of view. How do we being “intellectually senile” will have a site like Wikipedia? His conclusion on Wikipedia demonstrates fallacy, as the website is an exchange platform which millions of Wkipedians also pursue accuracy in their projects on knowledge.
References
Ebert, JD 2011, ‘Wikipedia; or, The Catastrophe of Knowledge’ in The New Media Invasion: Digital Technologies and the World They Unmake, McFarland and Company, London.
O'sullivan, D 2009, Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice? Ashgate Publishing Company, Farnham.
Sauers, MP 2009, Searching 2.0, Neal-Schuman Publishers, Michigan.
Surowiecki, J 2005, The Wisdom of Crowds, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, New York.
Wikimedia Foundation, Mission Statement. Available from:
