Wikipedia: what is the main issue?

'the real issue here: media literacy' — foe romeo

Having the page history of a Wikipedia entry clearly and accessibly represented on that entry's page will be valuable. But in itself this can't be the core issue: the core issue is still the validity or otherwise of the information (see my previous entry on this). I don't think the threefold nostrum that "more is better, older is better, fresher is better" (see Clay Shirky's recent piece) somehow leads us to the promised land. Trustworthiness in the world of the Wiki Now doesn't lie simply in the number of contributors, the length of time an entry has been worked on or in how recently it has been re-worked. In short, I share Danah Boyd's critical enthusiasm for Wikipedia. Danah Boyd: 'As a contributor to and user of Wikipedia, there is no doubt that i have a deep appreciation for it. … On topics for which i feel as though i do have some authority, i'm often embarrassed by what appears at Wikipedia'.

Take, for example, an issue to do with a minority group in our society: Roman Catholics. The Spectator published an article in its 18/25 December issue, We are all pagans now. In it, the claim was made that Dominican monks are 'Satan spawn'. A reply from the former Master of the order, Timothy Radcliffe, is then published in the following week's issue, quoting the non-Catholic Professor Diarmaid MacCullough, Professor of Church History at Oxford University, and challenging the widespread view in our society that there was such a thing as "the" Inquisition, that the Dominicans were responsible for it and that they (and inquisitors in general) were very wicked.

Wikipedia has a number of entries to do with, or bearing on, "the" Inquisition. Reading these entries, I can hear a number of different editorial voices, detect differing currents of thought tugging the articles this way and that. What I can't tell, even if I had the benefits of the additional visualisation (as proposed), is how … authoritative (informed, academically impartial) these editors are. Turning from The Spectator to do some research on "the" Inquisition, I would find in Wikipedia much to fire me up (no pun intended) and set me off on further research, but I wouldn't feel confident that I am in touch with something I could then simply use in a lesson (I'm a teacher). I would be happy to say to students, 'Wikipedia says …; now let's do some further digging …'

In the case of a minority group and its rights (including its rights to be understood fairly across time), it clearly matters that we can, indeed, trust the reference "books". But the same would apply, mutatis mutandis, if I were wanting some information on nuclear physics or post-modern literature or …

I can't see that, in itself, it matters how many times a page has been edited: views that are prejudiced or partial can still get to stand as truth unless there is some careful consideration given to matters to do with governance and editing. As I said before, these are issues centred around accuracy, trust, collaborative editing and reputation, and these simply won't go away. I welcome the discussion being informed by matters to do with the design of Wikipedia. In the end, transparency to the truth is what matters and design is very important here — but it has to be in the service of that quest for truth, veritas (as the Dominicans say). (I, too, by the way, find the notion of 'authority' rather boring. The authority of the truth, however, is a different matter.)

I am struck by the fact that within Wikipedia there seems to be a recognition that these issues to do with governance and editing must be faced. IMSoP's contributions to Joi Ito's post (see my earlier post) indicate this.