The Economist: The Battle for Wikipedia’s Soul
March 10th, 2008 | by Brad King |Wikipedia is pointed to as one of the shining beacons of social media. It’s a giant collaborative effort to chart human knowledge by tapping into the collective wisdom of, well, everyone.
Of course, there are problems with the model, not the least of which is its current overseer who has come under fire for what some people believe is detrimental personal conduct. However, the Economist thinks there might be a larger problem looming for the open-source knowledge repository.
It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source.
These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between “inclusionists”, who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors’ enthusiasm for the project, and “deletionists” who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries.
It’s a fascinating problem, one that MIT Technology Review editor and publisher Jason Pontin were discussing yesterday in terms of building community: how much intervention is too much intervention.I am a strict believer in free flowing information, instead setting up monitoring and ranking systems that allow the community to determine what information is relevant and what information is not.
Jason agrees with me…to a point. I’ll not articulate his point of view, but I think it’s fair to say that he believes there are times arbitrary action from an overseer is necessary (although he prefers an extremely light touch.
Still, it’s important to follow how this plays out in Wiki-world, particularly as we move to add social media into traditional journalism.
