Comments on: Cruising Wikipedia http://alex.halavais.net/cruising-wikipedia Things that interest me. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:07:57 +0000 hourly 1 By: jeremy hunsinger http://alex.halavais.net/cruising-wikipedia/comment-page-1#comment-3373 jeremy hunsinger Sat, 16 Jul 2005 17:42:07 +0000 /?p=1200#comment-3373 I think that overall... it is highly optimistic to rely on 'expert' peer review for encyclopedias like wikipedia... While it is true that there is non-controversial knowledge that may be included in such an effort and that the experts will agree on it... usually. most knowledge held by deeply vested experts depends on a wide variety of specificities and perspectives that others may not agree with or even if they agree with migh think that this is not the best way to represent or think about it. Beyond that is, and this is the real killer that will always haunt wikipedia... Audience. IF you think experts will agree on what the knowledge is, that's one thing, but to get them to agree on what knowledge is appropriate for what audience.... that is a whole different beast. what i present in an argument to my students is a different thing than i present in an argument to one set of my peers which is still different than what i present to another set of my peers. if you think that any of this is resolvable, you might want to reflect on the various theories of progress in science, and the theories that science is fitted to a progressive model, and then you start to see that things become very complicated, very fast when we start talking about what 'counts as knowledge' for an encyclopedia. (You'll also likely see why many encyclopedia author proposectives are 20+ pages long). My solution is let wikipedia alone, let it be and see where it goes and what it becomes. If you are inclined to encyclopedic endeavors, you are probably best to look into the best practices that have arises out of the last 200 years of publishing encyclopedias first, and then see how much openness of content is appropriate. because in the end, it is the expectations of that end which will get scholarly attention, i think. but maybe i'm being conservative. I think that overall… it is highly optimistic to rely on ‘expert’ peer review for encyclopedias like wikipedia… While it is true that there is non-controversial knowledge that may be included in such an effort and that the experts will agree on it… usually. most knowledge held by deeply vested experts depends on a wide variety of specificities and perspectives that others may not agree with or even if they agree with migh think that this is not the best way to represent or think about it. Beyond that is, and this is the real killer that will always haunt wikipedia… Audience. IF you think experts will agree on what the knowledge is, that’s one thing, but to get them to agree on what knowledge is appropriate for what audience…. that is a whole different beast. what i present in an argument to my students is a different thing than i present in an argument to one set of my peers which is still different than what i present to another set of my peers.

if you think that any of this is resolvable, you might want to reflect on the various theories of progress in science, and the theories that science is fitted to a progressive model, and then you start to see that things become very complicated, very fast when we start talking about what ‘counts as knowledge’ for an encyclopedia. (You’ll also likely see why many encyclopedia author proposectives are 20+ pages long).

My solution is let wikipedia alone, let it be and see where it goes and what it becomes. If you are inclined to encyclopedic endeavors, you are probably best to look into the best practices that have arises out of the last 200 years of publishing encyclopedias first, and then see how much openness of content is appropriate. because in the end, it is the expectations of that end which will get scholarly attention, i think.

but maybe i’m being conservative.

]]> By: joe http://alex.halavais.net/cruising-wikipedia/comment-page-1#comment-3372 joe Sat, 16 Jul 2005 17:04:37 +0000 /?p=1200#comment-3372 I think you're on to something here, Alex... specifically, it may be that versioning in and of itself could help. For example, how would you do the "freezing" of reviewed pages in your scheme near the end of this post? Would you give warning to the page and say, "In 6 days this page will be reviewed by experts." or would you just freeze a random set of pages at a time unkown to the community? You'd get different results for both... but you can imagine the spectre of a review could do a lot towards improving the quality of a page. I think you’re on to something here, Alex… specifically, it may be that versioning in and of itself could help. For example, how would you do the “freezing” of reviewed pages in your scheme near the end of this post? Would you give warning to the page and say, “In 6 days this page will be reviewed by experts.” or would you just freeze a random set of pages at a time unkown to the community?

You’d get different results for both… but you can imagine the spectre of a review could do a lot towards improving the quality of a page.

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