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Wikipedia and academia: Murder, Madness and Mayhem?

(Now translated into French as " Wikipédia et université: Murder, Madness and Mayhem?".)


When the idea of assembling a team of editors specifically to provide guidance in getting articles to Featured status was raised, and the Murder Madness and Mayhem WikiProject contacted as our first 'mission', I found myself reacting with both a resounding "brilliant!" and a sceptical "hmm... maybe". The first arose from my belief in "the dream"; the second from my experience of the reality of editing Wikipedia.

I passionately believe in the Wikipedia vision: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." (Jimmy Wales). Admittedly certain caveats apply—perhaps verifiable should be inserted in there somewhere!—but behind all the articles about obscure bands, primary schools and episodes of The Simpsons, the dream lives on. Informed people are powerful people, and we've come a long way from the time when knowledge and education were only for the elite few... but we've got further to go. Perhaps it's a flight of fantasy to expect an encyclopedia to change the world, but for me that's missing the point. It's the underpinning concept that gets me excited. What if everyone, regardless of race, religion, location, or anything else, could come together in the way that we model here? What if everyone could bypass their borders, governments and societal controls to communicate and collaborate person-to-person in a constructive way, and create something that's infinitely greater than the sum of its parts? I suspect that it would be hard to convince an informed, in-touch public that this group or that nationality are really their enemies, when extensive personal experience tells otherwise. The fact that Wikipedia is banned or restricted in parts of the world speaks volumes for the fear that this simple concept, the premise of open access to information, brings to some regimes.

Of course, as much as those of us who care about the credibility of our encyclopedia would like to believe that the knowledge we make accessible is actually useful, we still have to acknowledge all those articles about obscure bands, primary schools and episodes of The Simpsons. But in many ways, that is the strength of our model. Magnetomotive force, a technical article which attracts a relatively limited and specialised audience, is classified as a stub despite having been on the encyclopedia for four years. The Simpsons, however, has been consistently worked on, expanded, and currently exists in over 60 versions on different Wikis across the planet (compared to just six for mmf). If we accept that Wikipedia is more than just an encylopedia, it is clear that our pop-culture articles are also our shining successes. These are the vehicles for collaboration and social interaction across continents and oceans, and perhaps these then are the true reflections of the Wikipedia vision.

It is apparent that Wikipedia has cultural credibility by the bucketload. Want to know which Doctor came after Patrick Troughton? The name of Harry Potter's house? What's the first place most of us would look? However, I would love to see Wikipedia more accepted as an academically-credible resource. It has become a given that many students, from primary education upwards, immediately turn to Wikipedia as their first port of call when set almost any sort of research. Whether or not this is a "good thing" is debatable; as a young undergraduate working on my final-year project on X-ray crystallography, I would certainly have appreciated it back in 1989, but it would not, by itself, have been enough. Wikipedia cannot substitute for a library search; one still needs to find and read the relevant papers and journals. It can't teach a subject either; our articles are not written that way, although they should give enough of an overview that a lay-reader can grasp the what, if not the why and the how. To expect these things is to fundamentally misunderstand Wikipedia's purpose. The fact remains though that our encyclopedia has been, is, and probably always will be, used in this way. But how many students really understand the difference between turning to their favourite on-line resource to check a pub-quiz question on how many test centuries Andrew Strauss has scored (ten, BTW!), and citing the same in a biography of the cricketer?

This is, for me, the fascinating dichotomy of jbmurray's Murder Madness and Mayhem WikiProject, and the reason for my initial mixed reaction. We have, to some degree, come to expect our encyclopedia and our articles to be derided by academics, and although we don't have to like it, most of us would acknowledge that their objections have some force. Wikipedia has a history of being no respecter of claimed expertise, and arguments from authority are rarely taken seriously. Given the anonymity of editors and the impossibility of truly knowing the credentials of the person at the other end of the modem, it is difficult to see how it could be any other way... but being asked to back up every assertion made with a reliable source has undoubtedly driven away editors who would otherwise have been valuable to our efforts. Many academics, indignant at being treated in this manner by people they neither know nor respect (intellectually at least!), have washed their hands of the project and retreated in disgust, determined never to use nor to countenance the use of Wikipedia again. In some cases that reaction is understandable: I have seen instances where people have attempted to correct errors in their own biography, and whose edits have been reverted with a challenge to provide sources... and stayed reverted, since merely claiming "I am that person" is not sufficient authority to sway the article editors. I can also recall an incident where the author of a book used as an article source attempted to correct the article, and was reverted by editors who quoted his own book in justification. His frustrated defence, essentially "I wrote the damn text you're misusing; I know what I meant!", got him nowhere. On the other hand, why should we as editors blindly accept what we are told by a self-proclaimed 'expert'? Isn't that partly the point of the Wikipedia vision? We don't (or shouldn't) just provide the facts... ideally we provide the sources too, so anyone can check those facts. It's that "open access to information" again!

My enthusiasm for jbmurray's innovative idea—the hope that we could not only improve our encyclopedia (something very close to my heart) by assisting students with their studies, and in the process gain some credibility and maybe even some new addicts editors—was thus tempered by knowledge of the experience that many academics seem to have had with us. Granted, jbmurray was not a stranger to the way we work, and had forewarning of some of the peculiarities and downright absurdities that tie our endeavour together, but his project still had the potential to go very wrong. On a more technical point, I was also doubtful that we would even get close to the mark of achieving Featured status for each article under the MMM. Despite all the criticism, writing a featured article is a difficult, rigorous process that requires a considerable investment of time, energy, and dare I say, expertise (not only in the article subject, but also in meeting Wikipedia's stringent FA criteria). It was only going to work if we on the FA-Team could collaborate in the closest manner with jbmurray and the MMM editors.

In my time on Wikipedia I have come to the conclusion that, for some editors, collaboration will always be a mystery! However, there's really no secret to it, given goodwill on the part of all concerned. It's common sense that, if editors are treated with respect, approached in a friendly and open manner, and praised for what they do right as well as pulled up (politely!) on what they do wrong, the vast majority will respond positively. On-line as in real life, there are always some who seem congenitally unable to either give encouragement or receive criticism, but such editors eventually exhaust the patience of the community and take both their presence and baggage elsewhere. Although we're in a virtual world, on the end of the network cables are real people with real emotions, so why should they be treated in a worse manner than if we met them in our office, classroom or pub... and why should we permit such treatment to happen around us? Wikipedia is generally good at self-policing and hence collaboration, and as jbmurray notes, this can create a synergy that leads one to believe the vision really is attainable. He raises an astute point regarding the converse of this, though, and one that is related to the wider academic criticism. Where collaboration exists (to misquote the Bible; where two or more editors are gathered together in Wikipedia's name...), great things can happen. But where articles are allowed to languish in a poor condition—and all too often these will be the more esoteric technical and academic ones—it only harms our reputation. Antagonism, both in the opposite sense to synergy and as a descriptor of the reaction of those who access such articles, is the end result.

With academic oversight from jbmurray and encouragement and technical advice from the FA-Team, the MMM editors are producing some impressive, scholarly work—a remarkable achievement, given that many had never edited Wikipedia prior to this assignment. In some respects this a more unusual test of the community's ability to come together than we might normally encounter: unlike us Wikipedians, the MMM editors are not here because they want to be; they're here because they have to be—grades are riding on their success! They therefore have considerable motivation to collaborate successfully, but motivation of a different sort to that which drives most voluntary editors. I'm not so naive as to think this means all Wikipedians subscribe to Wales's vision—there are as many motivations as editors, and some are less laudable than others. However, setting aside those who are here to, for example, create vanity articles or advertise their business, the end result is the same, and again it is the collaboration of so many different personalities towards a common goal that gives me hope and belief in Wikipedia's mission. Collaboration is not always easy (if it was, bodies like ARBCOM and pages like ANI would be largely redundant), and from the off some of the MMM editors had to negotiate their way through article revisions that could potentially have led to revert wars and worse. They managed this very successfully, thanks to their own willingness to learn and goodwill on the part of regular editors that were unfamiliar with the project and its goals. It's not easy sometimes to distinguish between a new editor's first tentative steps, and vandalism!

So what will be the end result of the MMM's experiment? Obviously we'll have a better idea when it has run its course, but hopefully the students involved will have found the experience a rewarding and enlightening one, beyond achieving their final grades. Academically, as jbmurray writes, it should give them a clearer understanding of the need to chase down reliable sources and the limitations of any encyclopedia as a resource. Even at its best Wikipedia can only be a starting point for serious research. Perhaps it also offers a model that might successfully engage with academia. There's no doubt that many of our editors are highly qualified in their respective fields, and in bringing their depth of knowledge to the encyclopaedia, articles have greatly benefited as a result. However, one of the perennial issues raised amongst our community (or those sections of it concerned with article quality) is that of subject coverage. We can enforce rules such as the good and featured article criteria, but as non-experts, can we ever be sure that an article is completely comprehensive and accurate? We will follow up the sources given and check the references, but without specialist subject knowledge we must rely on the article itself for those sources. I believe we generally do a satisfactory job—even as non-experts, a bit a digging around will usually confirm the breadth (or otherwise) of coverage in an article—but as has proven to be the case with the MMM, expert advice (in the shape of jbmurray's input) has been invaluable. To put it simply, we need academics because their students apparently need us.

Naturally, there are caveats involved. A large part of the reason some experts have found Wikipedia such a frustrating and ultimately antagonistic place is that they have not engaged with the encyclopedia on its own terms. To put it another way: our community—our rules. Although the vast majority of editors will assume good faith, respect has to be earned. Taking the time to read and understand Wikipedia's policies, and making the effort to operate within those policies, will, over time, build the personal currency that gives weight to one's opinions and proposals. How much respect would one have for a stranger that showed up at a symposium, wilfully ignored the conventions and traditions of academic debate along with all advice, unilaterally imposed their own rules and procedures, and expected to be taken seriously? Why should we then tolerate the same? As jbmurray notes, the ability to construct a thesis, and tenaciously defend the same, is less prized on Wikipedia than the ability to negotiate a consensus... and to retire gracefully if that consensus is not what one would wish, even (as happens in such a diverse community) where other editors are clearly wrong. In the long term, does even this really matter? Consensus can change, and an article can always be revisited next week, or month, or year... This repeated failure on the part of some academics and experts to realise that Wikipedia is not an extension of their faculty and does not, therefore, come under their authority, that our mission is only to reproduce what has already been published in reliable sources (" verifiability, not truth"), and that their mode of behaviour in, and familiarity with, one world does not necessarily endow them with the tools to operate well in another, has undoubtedly harmed relationships on both sides. However, as the MMM and jbmurray have so successfully demonstrated, when one recognises Wikipedia for what it is (and perhaps more importantly for what it is not, and does not, claim to be), the value of academic input can be immense and holds clear benefits for both parties.

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