[p2p-research] how Wikipedia works - two blog posts

[Chris Watkins]

Found these interesting - addressing some specific concerns about Wikipedia.
I basically agree with these two posts (and I've only read the abstract of
Wray's work which they critique, as it's not open for non-subscribers). (The
concerns raised by Michel in our recent discussion about the Wikipedia
community and internal processes are a different topic - those issues do
carry more weight.)

Chris

Sage Ross <http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/search/label/Wikipedia>blogs:Wikipedia
in theory<http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2009/02/wikipedia-in-theory.html>
For
the last few days I've been stewing about one of the article in the
recent Wikipedia-edition
of the epistemology journal Episteme<http://www.eupjournals.com/toc/epi/6/1>.
(See the Wikipedia Signpost for summaries of the
articles<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-02-23/Philosophers_analyze_Wikipedia>.)
I don't find any of them particularly enlightening, but one just rubs me
wrong: K. Brad Wray's "The Epistemic Cultures of Science and Wikipedia: A
Comparison <http://www.eupjournals.com/doi/abs/10.3366/E1742360008000531>",
which argues that where science has norms that allow reliable knowledge to
be produced, Wikipedia has very different norms that mean Wikipedia can't
produce reliable knowledge.

I guess it's really just another proof of the zeroeth law of
Wikipedia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws#Laws_by_others>:
"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it
can never work."

Part of my problem might be that last year I blogged a comparison between
Wikipedia's epistemological methods and those of the scientific
community<http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2008/09/wikipedias-epistemological-methods.html>,
but came to the opposite conclusion, that in broad strokes they are actually
very similar. But more than that, I think Wray's analysis badly
misrepresents both the way science works and the way Wikipedia works.

A central piece of Wray's argument is scientists depend on their reputations
as producers of reliable knowledge for their livelihoods and careers, and so
their self-interest aligns with the broader institutional interests of
science. This is in contrast to Wikipedia, where mistakes have little or no
consequences for their authors and where a "puckish culture", prone to jokes
and vandalism, prevails. Wray writes that "In science there is no room for
jokes" such as the Seigenthaler incident.

The idea that scientists are above putting jokes and pranks into their
published work is belied by historical and social studies of science and by
many scientific memoirs as well. James D. Watson's Genes, Girls, and
Gamowis the first thing that comes to mind, but there are many
examples I could
use to make that point. And science worked much the same way,
epistemologically, long before it was a paid profession and scientists'
livelihoods depended on their scientific reputations. (I don't want to
over-generalize here, but some of the main features of the social
epistemology of science go back to the 17th century, at least. See Steve
Shapin's work, which is pretty much all focused, at least tangentially, on
exploring the roots and development the social epistemology of science.)

Likewise, the idea that Wikipedia's norms and community practices can't be
effective without more serious consequences for mistakes seems to me a
wrong-headed way of looking at things. On Wikipedia, as in science, there
are people who violoate community norms, and certainly personal consequences
for such violations are less on Wikipedia than for working scientists. But
for the most part, propagating and enforcing community norms is a social
process that works even in the absence of dire consequences. And of course,
just as in science, those who consistently violate Wikipedia's norms are
excluded from the community, and their shoddy work expunged.

For a more perceptive academic exploration of why Wikipedia does work, see
Ryan McGrady's "Gaming against the greater
good<http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2215/2091>"
in the new edition of First Monday.


Joseph Reagle <http://reagle.org/joseph/blog> blogs:Wray and the Wrong
Tree<http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/wikipedia/episteme-wray.html>

I have to agree with Sage
Ross<http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2009/02/wikipedia-in-theory.html>on
his response to Brad Wray's The
Epistemic Cultures of Science and Wikipedia: a
Comparison<http://www.eupjournals.com/doi/abs/10.3366/E1742360008000531>.
Wray is right to note that there are differences between scientific
knowledge production and Wikipedia production in terms of the knowledge
produced, who produces it, and the process. However, Wray's article does not
show any cognizance of the *actual* epistemic basis of Wikipedia: not a word
about Neutral Point of View, No Original Research, and Verifiability.
Instead, he uses Adam Smith's invisible hand metaphor to argue that if local
concern about one's scientific reputation and career yields a global value
in the production of knowledge, this cannot be claimed for Wikipedia because
no one has a scientific reputation at stake. First, the invisible hand
argument is not the only theory for understanding peer-production. Two, as
Ross notes scientific reputation is not the only motive that might be
operational under the invisible hand model -- many Wikipedians are very much
concerned about their peers' opinions. Wray writes "We have very little
reason to believe that an invisible hand is at work, ensuring that the
truth, and only the truth, is made available" (p. 43). Smith's hand can
apply to more than scientific reputation and "truth"!? That's simply barking
up the wrong tree.


-- 
Chris Watkins (a.k.a. Chriswaterguy)

Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

identi.ca/appropedia / twitter.com/appropedia
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I like this: five.sentenc.es
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