The transformation of Wikipedia continued over the weekend as the top Wikipedians gathered for their annual Wikimania confab. Whereas last year’s Wikimania was held quietly at a German youth hostel, this year’s took place in the elite groves of Harvard University, was sponsored by Coca-Cola and other big corporations, and was attended by some of the tech blogosphere’s most-bearded eminences.
Wikipedia is Mainstream.
Wikipedia cofounder and prime mover Jimmy Wales set the new agenda in his keynote address, when he announced that the online encyclopedia’s focus would shift from quantity to quality. In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Wales said that “there’s a sense in the English[-speaking] community that we’re going from the era of growth to the era of quality … That could mean quality control — making sure the information is accurate — and it could mean a clearer presentation, or more information.” That marks a striking change, at least in rhetoric, for Wales, who up until now has frequently cited the sheer quantity of Wikipedia’s entries as a measure of its success and who has resisted admitting that Wikipedia has become more controlled, and less open, as it has tried to improve its quality. In referring to a “new era,” Wales shows that he’s finally becoming comfortable in talking about the reality of Wikipedia’s evolution toward a more traditional editorial structure, where experts and editors take on a much more central role in shaping the product.
It remains to be seen exactly where Wikipedia will end up setting the balance between control and openness, and what level of quality it will achieve as a result. Clearly, there are tensions in the organization between those who desire to impose greater control and those who cherish the principle of openness on which the encyclopedia was founded. In what may be a sign of the depth of those tensions, the Times reports that “one member of the foundation’s board, Florence Nibart-Devouard, stormed out of a news conference because she had not been told about the announcement being made.”
But at least this year’s Wikimania helped set one thing straight: Quality is ultimately a function not of openness but of control. Quality doesn’t emerge naturally from below; it’s imposed willfully from above. It never hurts to be reminded that some truths remain truths even as fashions and technologies change.
There are strange rumblings going on in the inner circle of Wikipedia. It’s hard to tell if it’s conspiracy theories of the outsiders, or political maneuvering around The Money (and make no mistake, given the venture capital investment, a PayDay is planned).
I’m tempted to propose someone do a little investigative reporting as “citizen journalism” :-).
I find the following approach to quality control in Wikipedia curious. Some of the members are extremely concerned with only having entries about “worthy” topics. That is, an entry can be factually correct, but if it addresses an issue (or more likely a person) that/who is not deemed worthy enough then a big debate ensues about whether said entry should be deleted.
This seems like misplaced quality control (assuming that’s why members do it). After all, if no one or just a few people are interested in a topic then it won’t get viewed much. But why bother deleting it? Or is the idea that if it’s not of enough interest then there won’t be enough people monitoring it for quality?
I discussed some of this here a few months ago in response to some people wanting to delete items created about some of my fellow Crooked Timber bloggers and me as well. It was fascinating to follow the discussion by people (seemingly by no means experts in my areas of expertise) debating whether I was worthy.
It will be interesting to see what makes someone an expert then on Wikipedia. Number of hours available to devote to editing the site may not be a very good measure, to say the least.
There is a relatively easy way to increase quality, reduce controversy and improve accuracy of wikipedia articles: limit their length.
Encyclopedia’s are not expected to be thorough.
Jimmy is a thuggish amateur who has surrounded himself with thuggish amateurs. By amateur, whom etymology tells us that the person “loves” to do something, is a love of control, not a love of sharing knowledge. Jimmy is intimidated by experts or academics reviewing his work (thus his refusal to contribute to Nupedia). Jimmy will only take feedback from properly-trained people if first they accept him as their personal savior and show him the deference that his mother and paternal grandmother told him he is so deserving of. I hardly need to remind you about how Jimmy was making his money in the 1990’s. I hardly need to remind you how Jimmy attempted to conceal facts such as his sources of money, how he managed as a tyrant over his Objectivism Usenet list, and how Larry Sanger created Wikipedia. Jimmy would rather condemn such to damnatio memoriae. I hardly need to remind you of all the obfuscating jargon Jimmy invents and users, the personal grudges he holds in his “banned user” lists, his habit of characterizing all who fail to see the correctness of his Objectivist views as mentally ill, his lack of sympathy of the victims of Hurricane Katrina while he is hobnobbing around with Sir Richard Branson in the lap of luxury.
Florence is a woman of knowledge, accomplishment and compassion. She is a trained and well-credentialed working scientist and Jimmy is what? He is a bull session master. She has every right to be offended by Jimmy’s freezing out of the real decision-making process. Her reaction should be a reminder to us all that Jimmy will betray anyone to win. He has bred, in his own psychological image, a whole crop of admins with rotten power-obsessed attitudes. This Wikipedia user does not trust Jimbo. Jimbo made his money creating knowledge alright, and then keeping it to himself so that his money-exchanging would be to his advantage.
This Wikipedia user trusts Florence. This Wikipedia user would prefer to see Florence have much more real authority at the Foundation that Jimbo. Florence loves knowledge and shares it. Florence got all emo and stormed because she cares. Jimmy only cares about winning for himself. Jimmy, as child loved encyclopedias and does so as an adult: as long as those encyclopedias are his. Maybe we needed a prick like Jimmy (just like we needed Bill Gates, who at least could write code) to get the synergy of a fairly unified and dominant product in this area of “free encyclopedias”, which is obviously better than the duplicate efforts of many competing projects. But the project does not need him and his personality faults as tyrant anymore. His involvement at the Foundation should be restricted to that of CFO and /or fundraising. He should be forced to start a new non-admin Wikipedia account and remain anonymous.
At WikiMania 2006, Florence talked about diversity and dissolving hegemony of Wales within the Foundation Board. When the Essjay incident erupted, her approach as, head of Wikimedia Foundation board, said in reference to the knee-jerk reaction by some to Essjay fake credentials: “I think what matters is the quality of the content… not the quality of credentials showed by an editor.” To be fair, Jimmy has also expressed such sentiment, but in he did so by explicitly equating the pedigological offerings of high-school kids with Harvard professors. And in the Essjay incident, what was Jimmy doing? Bragging to critics about how he fired Essjay, who had poured two years of his life into the project for free. This Wikipedia user trusts Florence, but not Jimmy.