Science and Wikipedia | Hacker News Reader

Science and Wikipedia

michaelnielsen.org

4 pointsbreily7 comments

Strange article.

The author writes: "Given that Wikipedia’s stated vision is to give every single person in the world free access to the sum of all human knowledge, you might guess it was started by scientists eager to collect all of human knowledge into a single source. [...] Even today, contributing to Wikipedia is regarded as a low-value activity by most professional scientists."

What he seems to be ignoring is that the means that Wikipedia chose also allows "read/write" access to that "sum total of human knowledge," and that part of the reason that scientists might regard editing Wikipedia as a "low-value" activity is that their contributions stand a significant chance of being reverted or mangled by pretty much anyone with a keyboard.

I wasn't ignoring that. I've asked numerous scientists why they don't contribute. The common answer given by every single one of those people was the answer I give in the article - essentially, contributions to Wikipedia are not something they can put on their CV. One of these people also raised the read / write point you mention, and, for him, it was the more important issue.

Sure, but how can you put something on your CV when it can disappear (or be edited beyond recognition) 5 minutes after you post it? Wikipedia has a fundamentally different process than traditional publishing-- so while the goal of "free access to the sum of human knowledge" may sound similar to the goals of the academy, the reality is very different.

Your comment nicely summarizes the point of my article. The obvious conclusion to draw is that there is something quite wrong with the way the academy is going about things.

Edit: As a tangential point, Wikipedia uses version control, so all edits are preserved in a version history. Not that it matters in this case - Wikipedia edits aren't journal publications, and so most academics would prefer to keep them off their CV.

Interesting-- I thought the obvious conclusion to draw is that there is something quite wrong with the way Wikipedia is going about things.

So you think that Wikipedia isn't useful?

It's useful, in the way a public bathroom is useful-- you're glad it's there when you need it, but the experience really depends upon the behavior of the last guy to use it before you.

I'll take peer reviewed (or even just professionally edited) content over Wikipedia, anytime. But, it's certainly better than nothing.

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