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

Thu Mar 5 11:39:55 CET 2009

very useful, I'm publishing it on the 7th,

Michel

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 11:59 PM, Chris Watkins <chriswaterguy at appropedia.org
> wrote:

> 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
> blogs.appropedia.org
>
> I like this: five.sentenc.es
>
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