> cosmicpenguin.net

This is the first in a series of essays about Wikipedia. I have been a regular wikipedia editor for about two years now, Myu editing activities have been concentrating almost exclusively on articles about Wyoming, thought I am regular reader of the "drama boards", the deep dark inner belly of Wikipedia where the masses come to complain and snipe and each other. In this essay, we discuss the idea of the "encyclopedia that anybody can edit".

It is a lofty idea, to be sure. The idea that an army of editors collaborating on the complete sum of human knowledge surely could get further to the goal then a handful of editors on a "traditional" encyclopedia. The main problem with this idea is that "everybody" isn't really "everybody". To edit Wikipedia you need Internet access, which removes a majority of the worlds population, essentially leaving the industrialized nations. Next, you need to be able to write in English. English is the worlds most popular language, but its one thing to speak and understand it, but its quite another thing to write it. I can read and speak Italian rather well, but I am no where near competent enough to write on the Italian Wikpedia. This further restricts editing to English speaking countries, and younger and educated people in western Europe and parts of the eastern rim. Next, you need to be able to navigate the Internet well enough to find your way to Wikpedia, understand the rules, and successfully edit an article, reducing the pool to younger editors (less the 40). Of course, thats not an exclusive set - there are of course successful generation X and Baby Boomer editors many of whom form the core of the internal Wikipedia administration and judicial system.

So you have the set of Internet enabled, English writing, web savvy individuals, but we haven't covered the most important filter of all: Virtually all editors on Wikipedia have ulterior motives for being there. Very few people sit down and say "I'm bored, I'll write an article for Wikipedia" and four hours later a featured article on an obscure genus of snail pops up. It is human nature that for any given endeavor, the majority of people quite simply cannot be bothered to participate. Sure, some people might do a drive by edit to correct blatently incorrect information, but it is quite another thing to navigate the alphabet soup of guidelines and establish oneself as an regular editor.

Nearly all Wikpedia editors past present and future come with an editing agenda. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are malicious (though many are) but that means that everything they type will be affected. Wikipedia rules try to promote neutral point of views, but we are all humans and it is naive to think that we can leave ourselves at the door even though most do an admirable job. The big problem is the editors that come with no pretense of neutrality. They come to promote, to spam, to attack and to skew. They come out of extreme love and out extreme hatred of a celebrity. They come to promote their religious, political or ethnic views. In short, they come with The Truth (TM) and are often prepared to defend it to the wikideath.

The problem with these editors is that they take a disproportionate amount of time and energy from the other editors, which damages the entire project. Quality editors who rightly should be working on new articles instead choose to spend their time dealing with and creating drama. Strong opinions polarize editors enough that opposite bias quickly appears as the two sides pull back and forth. Even on those articles where consensus is won, what emerges is the "popular bias" which further fosters strife as opposing editors pile on.

So what does this mean for you? It means that you need to remember that everything on WIkipedia was written by a biased human (and some more biased then others), so taking anything you read with a huge grain of salt would be an excellent idea. While Wikipedia bills itself as the "encyclopedia that anybody can edit", they should call it the "encyclopedia that anybody can edit provided they have Internet access, speak English, and feel really strongly about something". Huh, no wonder they use the first version. Next up, professionals and their place (or not) on Wikipedia.