Obviously Wikipedia does not have the same sort of authority that a traditional encyclopedia does (nor is it as limited and dated either) and anyone using wikipedia as a definitive source in a research paper deserves to be severely penalized (because of the changing content if nothing else). However, I just don’t understand all the anti-wikipedia hate. The Register is intent on portraying Wales (founder of wikipedia) as guilty of some moral outrage for creating this public menace. Some librarians (though certainly not all) make a point of showing off wikipedia as an untrustworthy site and generally taking their criticism beyond concerns about citations and reasonable caution. There are a host of anti-wikipedia websites. Amazingly there is even one devoted to a class action lawsuit against wikipedia. Now there is even an article on the relatively restrained FindLaw’s Writ advocating partially revoking their protection from libel lawsuits.

What the fuck? It’s just a website people what is all the fuss. If you don’t like it don’t use it, even try and convince other people that it isn’t that reliable (though some experiments have been done in this regard and disappointed the critics) but there is no reason to be outraged some people got together and wrote down a bunch of facts on their web page. I’ve always thought those suggestions that people had some vested interest in reserving information to the elite (the type of people who go look it up in musty libraries) but maybe I should reconsider that opinion.

Ridiculous as I find these protests I guess I should say a few words about why they are in error. Basically all the complaints focus around the accuracy of wikipedia (fanned by recent events). Importantly these anti-wikipedia zealots aren’t complaining just because wikipedia occasionally has errors or makes mistakes. If this was their position the entire web would be the subject of their ire. Rather the protest is that wikipedia doesn’t take enough responsibility for their content and that somehow their place as a widely consulted web reference is somehow “unearned” or unfair.

While I do think that wikipedia could improve its moderation model and it is too idealistic about openness the critics I mention are not offering constructive suggestions to make a valuable project even better they are actually critical that an openly editable encyclopedia exists at all. Their defense for complaining about a free resource is that by calling itself an encyclopedia this website somehow becomes responsible for meeting the same standard encyclopedia does. This is also the argument made against wikipedia’s BBS like libel protection.

The idea that a mere title could carry with it that level of expectation or those moral responsibilities is just absurd. I mean would the onion suddenly be in the wrong if they had been titled West Valley News. Besides the site is not encyclopedia.com it is wikipedia.com and just as one should have a lot different expectations from a place called fakepedia.com so too should one have different expectations for a wiki encyclopedia. The essential feature differentiating wikipedia from a normal encyclopedia is in the name. What more could you want?

The difference between wikipedia and a normal encyclopedia is readily apparent with a quick visit to any page, perhaps a few deeply confused people don’t realize this but some people think theonion is a real paper too. The real reason so many people trust what wikipedia says is because it is so frequently right. If wikipedia had the same layout and name but most of its information was false it would never have gotten popular (they don’t even advertise). What works up these critics is that the general accuracy of wikipedia makes many people (perhaps wrongly) put great trust in the site but the idea that a webpage suddenly becomes morally (or legally) suspect because it usually gets things right is pretty absurd.

Wikipedia is a free resource which goes to every reasonable effort to inform people how it works. Unlike a commercial product they have no responsibility to be whatever their ‘customers’ want them to be so long as they don’t misrepresent what they are. Essentially the critics are mad about the way people use and trust wikipedia but can’t get away with telling people they can’t read or believe something so instead they attack the website. Their position might be obscured by the arguments but basically it amounts to the absurd position that it is wrong for people to get together and create a freely editable website which aims to have the same content as an encyclopedia.