I’m an opponent to Wikipedia as this online encyclopedia "created by the community". Wiki, bares a remarkable similarity to Open Source software in that it’s constantly being hailed as the Silicon Valley snake oil that’ll cure all your woes – in this case, it’ll help you develop an evolving informational database.
Open source is often described as a method of developing software through a community of developers. The common line I get is, "The community of developers is smarter than any individual developer."
Publically published wiki is very similar. Community development purists are generally the one’s toting wiki as a great invention for supposedly building libraries of living information that is "self correcting" and constantly updated through the community.
Of course, rarely does anyone mention the complete lack of accountability that publicly monitored wiki maintains. What do I mean? Start with the fact that Wikipedia describes itself as a source of information for people to use and ultimately rely on. Yet, it simultaneously declares that "it’s a work in progress" and that it’s not always accurate.
Imagine someone writing a Wikipedia entry about you or something important to you. Imagine them mischaracterizing your life and your family. Imagine personal attacks being made against you in scenarios that you have a very different view of. Now imagine people telling you about what they read on the Internet in the Wikipedia about you.
The Wiki folks will defend themselves by saying that they have moderators to review changes and that they don’t condone this sort of behavior, but how does one really know when this behavior is taking place? When someone writes that an individual catered his child’s birthday with Burger King food, how would the moderator know that the individual in question was a high level executive at McDonald’s where this sort of behavior is frowned upon and could jeopardize the individual’s career? The fact is, they wouldn’t however there’s nothing stopping anyone from writing potentially dangerous or slanderous material about anyone or anything publicly with accountability to accuracy or personal reputational damage.
The wiki folks will also say that, hey, you can change the content yourself… but that’s just the point:
YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO. No one should have to defend themselves or causes they’re interested in or in my case – their company. Have you read the wiki entry for Microsoft?
Like many scenarios with open source, Wiki is being applied here in a scenario that it just simply isn’t suited for. Wiki’s have been around for decades – they’re called Customer Support databases. Any help desk employee will tell you that living databases of information on indexed searchable topics have been around since the dawn of computing and before. Wiki is a perfect solution for these scenarios where each individual as well as an overseeing body (the company) has a vested interest in maintaining accountable, accurate, legally binding content in the database. Wiki is NOT a good solution for open databases where both the well meaning and the sycophant can commune together to write on the same topics — while the reading public believes it to be a reliable source.
And if it’s not to be referenced as a reliable source, WHY DOES IT EXIST? Intellectual chewing gum? Declaring publicly that Wikipedia is "not a reliable source" wouldn’t matter. It would still be published material without public attibution or accountability and that makes it dangerous.
The snide might argue, "Well, isn’t that what WINDOWS does? I mean, does it constantly patch itself?" Well, yes, but there’s a ton of arguments as to why this is an apples to oranges comparison. Let’s ignore the fact that the EULA that Windows provides is a contract between the buyer/user/installer and Microsoft that acknowledges risks. Let’s also forget about the fact that Windows doesn’t publicly slander anyone. Windows is a personal tool, voluntarily used by the licensee. It’s not a publicly accessible resource that everyone shares. It’s not something that you can’t avoid. (Yes, there are many Windows alternatives.) It’s not a collaboration of any Tom, Dick, or Harry – it’s a orchestrated product that’s generated by legally employed programmers that have a responsibility and an accountability to the people that own the company – the shareholders. No such body exists for wikipedia meaning there’s no standard to uphold…
…other than a voluntary one. And we all know how well that goes.
Apparently, I’m not alone. There are numerous people that think Wikipedia is an untrustable, unaccountable resource.
(I should of course mention in fairness that Wiki was developed and invented by Ward Cunningham, a Microsoft employee.)
kurtsh
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