Wicked-Pedia: Volume III

Behind the Curtain

Taking a sneak peak behind Wikipedia, helps us learn a little about what is really going on.

Wikipedia is constantly behind re-written, changed and updated, negotiated, and developed. There are rules that need to be adhered to and often a finished article comes after a process of development through negotiation, sometimes arbitration and final editing. Under Wikipedia rules contributors to an article must check for neutrality, weighting and reliability through a dialogue process that includes patience, fairness of intent and "wikilove". See the flowchart below to see how the process works.

Case Study: Talk: Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church

The case study I explore here looks at what is going on "behind the scenes" in an article that appears in Wikipedia entitled Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. Let me begin with a disclaimer - I'm not writing about Roman Catholicism; what I'm doing is taking a look at some aspects of the debate that go on before a "finished" article in Wikipedia can come into fruition. There's a good deal of debate between contributors here, some early debates about the direction, and thus the title of the page. Bearing in mind, the central tennant of NPOV (neutral point of view), an adminstrator has at some point locked the page from further editing to allow the contributors to reflect on their own agendas and to allow them to reach a consensus after an edit-war between differing contributors has pursued. It's easy to follow one's own bias and in this example, the adminstrator is trying to get the contributors to avoid making general statements that could be deemed biased (in the sense of the religion) but to consider the sense of wider social threat that existed in 17th Century France - there was general anti-Huguenot sentiment in France from secular bodies during Louis XIV's reign, as well as the RC establishment.

During the processes involved in the various Wikipedia edits, the adminstrator reminds contributors to consider weighting given to subtopics (in this case, the arbitrator suggests that the debate is headed off topic). The adminstrator also reminds the contributors that they need to avoid maligning each other's sources/cited historians, encouraging them to seek resolution, through Wikiquette, ultimately threatening to lock them out completely.

Behind the curtain ... it's all very interesting.

Wicked-Pedia: Volume II

"Wicked"

Wicked Ver 1

Perhaps an attempt at reaching out to the Urban-aware* audience. Of course, those who are, will tell me that "wicked" is "good" and not "evil" in the world of Urban-speak. That said, I am quite happy to play on both senses of the word, because it serves to illustrate a point. Wikipedia is the most popular and the largest encyclopaedic reference out there - open-source and free - it is open to all - to contribute articles, to edit and to refine. Wikipedia is growing as people add topics of interest or contribute to articles already posted. I'm a front-end user and remain loyal to its potential. That's the first sense in which I use the word "wicked".

Wicked Ver 2

However, in Volume I of this topic, I explored how Wikipedia is not without flaw. There are poorly written, poorly referenced articles and contributions to this body of knowledge from people who whose point of view does not necessarily conform to the NPOV (neutral point of view) standards that are key to Wikipedia. Worse, there is abuse, deliberate attempts to hijack, push agendas and malicious vandalism; "wicked" in the commonly used sense of the word.

... The Places In-Between ...

But the spirit of open contribution is at the heart of Wikipedia; a repository of information that is bias-free and up-to-date with quality citations and links to other referenced works. Editing is continual and occurs through a process that is behind the scenes - some modifications are not checked because of vastness of scale and the principle of "good intent", others are subject to automated bot checks, and others are edited by teams of volunteers to ensure that the rules are followed; neutrality, reliable citations, academic style of writing, spelling and grammar. Disagreements can be reported through processes that includes teams checks and adjudicators. (... to be continued ...)

*Personal Opinion: Urban-speak is not always for the faint of heart

Wicked-Pedia: Volume I

Wicked-Pedia

I like Wikipedia, and use it as a point of reference, even here in this blog. Often I'll follow the articles in full, but mostly I pick up points of interest through scanning. For me, Wikipedia fits the need to fill my curiosity that my Hutchinson Encyclopaedia once served - similar to the times that I would spend in the school library looking at Britannica. Later, when we had Encarta, with it's stylised indexing, media files and hyperlinks, I thought that I had the world of knowledge all in one place. It was a good start, but of course slightly inaccurate - there's simply too much information to store and collate on a single CD-ROM. Besides, the fundamental disadvantage with Hutchinson, Britannica and Encarta was that they were pretty much out of date as soon as they went to press. Besides, what about the hidden pockets of information, that never quite made it to a volume of Britannica, or into the final edit of Encarta?

Step forward Wikipedia. I can spend a good deal of time, reading about the Jurassic and find myself clicking on the hyperlinks that carry me off somewhere else, where I'll follow another entry with interest; dinosaurs, air composition, flowering plants, modern farming, economy, gold, the periodic table, alchemy, the Renaissance, modernism, geo-politics and so on. All, advert free, without stepping outside of the Wiki-world.

The People's Encyclopaedia

But is Wikipedia, the fountain of all knowledge? It is, I guess, without boundaries, but there-in is the Achilles' Heel. We live in an Information Age, where the cyber-world is littered with junk, incomplete works, debris, misinformation and malice. This does, quite often, creep into Wikipedia, and therefore the whole process of navigating through Wikipedia, like much of the WWW, is about being able to spot obvious bias, avoiding the vandalism, recognising the variation in quality and taking care to check and validate what is presented as a 'truth'. Wikipedia may be good, but like anything good, it has to be supported to keep it good and we still need to take care where we step when exploring.  

(...to be continued ...)

The Encyclopaedia of the Brethren of Purity

Of course, no discussion on encyclopaedias would be complete without mentioning the Brethren of Purity, whose 52 volume compendium was completed in Basra, Iraq circa 1000 CE, later to influence post-Renaissance encyclopaedias in the West.