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04/27/2005 Archived Entry: "Wikipedia"

Wikipedia
Over lunch Monday, I had the brief opportunity (thanks to Steve) to chat a bit with Cory Doctorow. Boingboing is one of the best things about the Web, and Cory gave a fantastic talk on copyright/new media and the larger work being done in that area in various bodies, including NGOs who attend meetings held by the UN.
But at one point I asked about Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become an Internet darling for supposedly opening up the boundaries of encyclopedic classifications, naming itself "the free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
As Jenny and I have discovered, however, this isn't actually true. The editors of Wikipedia monitor submissions and quickly vote down edits based on a few capricious rules. Jenny even got a message to stop "vandalizing" the site because we were adding so-called unacceptable additions to entries, though I'm not sure all our entries really were unacceptable (even by the site's own posted standards).
Wikipedia's motto isn’t: give the entry time to develop and become as full blown as one on a given recognizable issue. Instead, editors operate according to a policy of “I don’t recognize it, it’s bogus.” I asked Cory if he thought Wikipedia was truly "open source" then, and the response was pretty much yes, though (and I agree with this point) it is a site owned by one individual, so that individual does have discretion regarding what content is posted. He also suggested (and I liked this idea) that if it is indeed allowed through copyleft, someone could merely download all the content, and re-upload it into a new space with all the new edits one wanted. Fair enough.
But I'm still somewhat bothered by the site's claim that anyone can edit it. I'm not troubled by the site's internal policy, but rather the continuation of this rhetoric of openness, which isn't exactly open. The site can/should do as it likes. But the rhetoric of openness continues to be a dominant one on the Web even as it is simultaneously critiqued by like-minded folks (think of Mark Dery's early critique of AT&T's "You Will" in the beginning of Escape Velocity) who are furious over corporate America’s false openness, then turn around and embrace a non-commercial application which contends it is open, utopist, etc.
What may be fascinating about Wikipedia is not its open-nature, which doesn’t really exist, but that it allows for various threads, alternative entries, flexibility for editing, etc. All are fine new media attributes. Openness, however, still doesn’t really seem to be a new media attribute in the sense of open participation by anyone at any time. That is not how I understand Ong’s claim of openness for new media (which has more to do with the idea of flexibility, editing, addition), and it is not how I see Wikipedia operating, though the site seems to claim the contrary. Regulation is still dominant in terms of enforcing rules, ideology, codification.

Posted by gambling @ 05/06/2005 03:01 AM EST

I remember adding to some entries real facts. The editors quickly erased them. No reason given.

Now you can also start an entry, and then have that entry flagged for not meeting the criteria. There is then some kind of vote to take down the entry. Usually, they suspect a fake entry. But the entry may be, as I have written, real, just not known to the editor. They then delete the entry.

A good place to view all this is the monitor page - where they show you which entries are currently flagged, and you can then see the reasons and votes as to why.

Posted by jeff @ 04/27/2005 03:33 PM EST

Well, one entry I remember was some obscure term about legbones. I kept all the "ideas" the same, but I rewrote the brief entry in a narrative tone (tossed in with some personal asides from the narrator about his Thai dinner that he was enjoying.) All was clean and harmless. They didn't like it, and would later send me a nasty email accusing me of vandalizing. I guess all the entries must be written in a "serious" style.

Posted by jenny @ 04/27/2005 03:27 PM EST

What entries? Wikipedia has had some pretty epic battles over some terms...

There's always been a gap between the professed openness of the web, technology, etc. and its actualization. And I'm not talking about access questions here. More like "keep the rational, stable, structure of print alive..."

Posted by cbd @ 04/27/2005 03:04 PM EST