Wikipedia, shun or cherish it?

In light of the recent changes in Wikipedia’s policies I’d like to share with you the little clash of civilisations I experienced when starting my job at the University last spring.

I had one of those 'the world freezes, your mind goes blank, and slowly the first word that surfaces is "but..."' moments. In other words pure disbelief, when I heard that there were teachers who refused to accept references to Wikipedia in papers from students. Who actually gave their students negative advice about using Wikipedia, calling it an untrustworthy source of information. In retrospect it was a moment where two worlds met, and yes I guess you could say clashed, at least in my head.

Up until that moment, Wikipedia was for me a place, a movement that was to be embraced, cherished, valued and awed. The ultimate example of what individuals pulling together can do, open, sharing knowledge, building upon one another, all volunteers, and thousands and thousands of them... The only resistance I had seen up until that moment was disinterest or lack of time to invest. An active resistance or distaste to it, was not something I had been exposed to yet. I guess this says something about the cocoon I lived in up until then, but let me share a bit of what that cocoon looked like from the inside.

It was during a poignant speech given by Ethan Zuckerman at the Web2forDev conference initiated by CTA and held at the FAO offices in Rome, that I felt my eyes were opened to the possibilities of Wikipedia. I’d like to share some of what he said. His full speech is also available online.

"The single biggest (bang for your buck) thing you could probably do as an NGO in this sector is to get smart about wikipedia. You do a search right now on food security on Google, the number one match is going to be wikipedia, and it’s going to be there for a long long time. The reason for that is wikipedia is now the 9th most popular internet site in the entire world. […] Wikipedia is an enormous project with hundreds of thousands of people working on it but you can be one of them at a very very low cost of entry. It costs almost nothing for people who are working at FAO to monitor this article [displayed food security on wikipedia] very carefully. This is an article that people at FAO should really care about. I know people get very paranoid about wikipedia; “can I edit wikipedia, can I participate in it?”. The answer is yes, just don’t be an idiot. […] You have to go in and be believable. You have to go in and share information. Wikipedia is a culture of sharing information. The people who work in this building [FAO] and the people who are here for this conference [Web2forDev] know more about food and agricultural food security and things like that than most of the people in the wider world. You are welcome. Come on in, lend a hand. Just do it in a way that is respectful and respects the culture. Learn how that culture works. It is literally the biggest bang for the buck thing you can do. "

Moving from the development sector into the educational sector, I brought that speech with me and felt the enormous potential ahead of me. The opportunity to tap into the knowledge within academia and facilitate activities to get that knowledge out into the wider world. Via, amongst other avenues, Wikipedia (the biggest “bang for your buck”, in the words of Ethan Zuckerman). Then you can imagine how ‘jaw-dropping’ sobering it was to hear that wikipedia was being shunned by some teachers who didn’t want their students “exposed” to incorrect information. In the meantime I have heard that at my nephews school, they also discourage the use of Wikipedia.

In fairness to the anti position towards Wikipedia, I have to explain that the teacher who held this opinion had found an entry in Wikipedia which was incorrect. She took the trouble to edit the information, but her edits were removed and considered not correct. This brings to light the editing policies of Wikipedia. Just recently they have been adapted, at least when it concerns entries about individuals. Otherwise, they must be doing something right if you consider the research conducted by Nature magazine in 2005. They had an expert group of people examine 42 entries and the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

I have been brought up to trust Nature, but this research, widely publicized, was based on the examination of 42 entries. Wikipedia contains millions. But who am I to question Nature, right? They must be right, and Wikipedia must be… hm.

Conclusion: A clash can be a very useful wake up call (no pun intended to my recent car crash…). It was good to become more aware of the critique Wikipedia receives and probably in many cases, justifiably so. But this just drives me to want to improve what is already there, not shun it. Maybe teachers and university students are not using Wikipedia, but the rest of the world is. Let’s improve what is there so that all those people who are very thankful to have access to Wikipedia (think mobile phone coverage in Africa), can also have access to correct information.