Wikiality

Inter­est­ing post on the Wel­ling­ton Fin­an­cial Blog about “Wiki­al­ity” — the prac­tice of tak­ing stuff in Wiki­pe­dia as the truth, or, to quote: ““a real­ity where, if enough people agree with a notion, it becomes the truth.”

JN notes that Wiki­pe­dia has been cited by the courts, and this is reason for con­cern. A snippet:

The prac­tice poses two problems:

1. The ref­er­ences may be inac­cur­ate; and
2. Even if accur­ate, the ref­er­ences are sub­ject to change at any point in the future, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for any future decisions to refer back to the ori­ginal or under­stand the con­text in which it was made.

Given recent reports of Microsoft offer­ing to pay indi­vidu­als to make changes to cer­tain Wiki­pe­dia art­icles in which they have a ves­ted interest, the cred­ib­il­ity of the site as a defin­it­ive ref­er­ence source again comes into question.

A few of my col­leagues at the firm also expressed bemuse­ment when a recent case in Ontario (don’t have the cita­tion, sorry) also cited Wikipedia.

I am quite a big fan of Wiki­pe­dia. It is, I think a rather use­ful and handy tool to refer to from time to time. Do I take it as the gos­pel? No. Would I use it if I were try­ing to con­coct an anti­dote for a poison that was about to kill me? Prob­ably not. Would I cite it in a legal research paper? Pos­sibly. In fact, quite likely.

Although Wiki­pe­dia is by no means without its weak­nesses, it also has its strengths. Sure, there is a pos­sib­il­ity of inac­cur­acy. But then again, isn’t some­thing less likely to have inac­curacies if it is reviewed (and edited) by more eyes (and more minds)? Isn’t it more likely that if there is a dis­pute about what is and isn’t cor­rect, it will come to light, just like the Microsoft incident?

And what source, can it be said, is free of inac­curacies? Cer­tainly not The New York Times. Although the Gray Lady is quick to point out that it was “deceived” by an errant reporter, it is less quick to reflect on the fact that it pub­lished fab­ric­ated stor­ies. That of course is the clearest example, but his­tory is rife with examples of inac­cur­ate or mis­lead­ing stor­ies in the press. Less clear, of course, is media bias. And one only needs to refer to Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent. I don’t neces­sar­ily agree with all that book has to offer, but it cer­tainly provides some food for thought.

What about sci­entific pub­lic­a­tions? Hmmm. Well. Again, truth is quite often rel­at­ive. The clearest examples, are, of course, out­right fab­ric­a­tion. Non­ethe­less, Dr. Hwang Woo-suk’s paper on pro­duct­ing the first cloned stem cell line was con­sidered the truth for sev­eral years, until he was dis­cred­ited. And more gen­er­ally speak­ing, is it not true that, in the world of sci­ence, what is con­sidered to be the truth is what most sci­ent­ists believe to be true? Is that not the sys­tem of peer review? A great read on this topic is The Struc­ture of Sci­entific Revolu­tions (as an aside, its also the book that intro­duced the phrase “paradigm shift” into pop­u­lar par­lance). I won’t bore you with details, but suf­fice it to say that, at the end of the day, sci­ence, at least in concept, may not be that far from wikiality.

My point isn’t neces­sar­ily to skewer exist­ing sources of “truth” but rather to point out that such sources aren’t neces­sar­ily more reli­able or accur­ate, or less fal­lible, than some­thing like Wikipedia.

And as for things chan­ging? Make a copy.

related:

1. Wiki­al­ity  —  Part II
2. Wiki­al­ity  —  Part III
3. Microsoft Pat­ents RSS. Or Tries To. Maybe.
4. Fair Use and the DMCA
5. Pre­texting, Eth­ics and Clients