[WikiEN-l] Re: Nupedia?

Sun Dec 14 23:42:46 UTC 2003

Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> I think the way forward from here is to emulate the systems used in 
> scientific peer review and publishing. What makes Wikipedia work, in 
> my opinion, is that is already emulates the model by which scientific 
> knowledge has been able to accumulate: an "information commons" to 
> which anyone can contribute and which anyone can use. 

The issue that faces us is that of trying to find a dynamic equilibrium 
between two opposing epistemologies.  The peer review approach tends to 
be exclusionist, and although it's fine to be critical of the hypotheses 
that are presented, there still needs to be latitude for them to be 
presented in the first place without fear that they will be rejected 
before they ae tested.

> Until the 19th century, the scientific system was truly open to 
> anyone, and credentials didn't matter much. As the quality and 
> quantity of scientific information increased and its power to 
> transform technology and society became evident, the stakes got higher 
> and peer review entered the system as a way of trying to determine 
> which scientific projects should be funded and considered reliable. 

Was it really open to anyone?  The credentials were different but they 
still mattered.  As long as the means for the mass communication of 
scientific information were not there, the credentials of the pulpit 
were the ones that mattered.  The heresies of a Galileo were not within 
the grasp of the common man; there was no gavel to gavel newspaper 
coverage of his trial

> Right now Wikipedia is a hobby for most of the people who use it, 
> which places it in a position analogous to the days when science was 
> the hobby of gentleman tinkerers. I don't think many people right now 
> are particularly using Wikipedia as part of their job or in any other 
> context where they absolutely need to rely on its accuracy. When I 
> personally look things up on Wikipedia, for example, I don't have to 
> rely on its accuracy because there are other information sources that 
> I can use to double-check anything I find here. If its reliability 
> becomes more important to users, people will begin to develop more 
> deliberate procedures for fact-checking and credentialing. 

There's a problem when a source of information becomes too reliable. 
 People become lazy; they stop looking critically at the text in front 
of them; they begin to feel that they don't need to double-check.

> One way that Wikipedia could incorporate peer review would be to 
> develop its own panels of accredited experts on various topics. Right 
> now users are a largely undifferentiated mass. There are some 
> differences between anonymous IP users, registered users and sysops, 
> but those differences merely reflect different permission settings in 
> the software and don't correspond to any distinctions in terms of 
> individuals' actual expertise in specific fields. 

Where are these "accredited experts" going to come from.  The paradox is 
that the peers who do the peer review for the members of the 
undifferentiated masses cannot come from what are now the acknowledged 
experts.  The peer review must come from other members of the 
undifferentiated masses.  Who ever said that the democratization of 
knowledge would be any less messy than the democratization of political 
institutions?

> In the future, we may want to have some volunteer committees: a 
> science committee, a history committee, a humanities committee and so 
> forth. These could be further differentiated over time as need be. For 
> example, there could be science subcommittees in areas such as 
> biochemistry or particle physics. Individuals with credentials and 
> expertise in each field could be invited to serve. Suppose, for 
> example, the science committee consisted of several Nobel laureates 
> and other leading scientists. If a dispute arose over a particular 
> article, the committee would be invited to mediate and render an 
> opinion, and if mediation alone was insufficient to resolve the 
> dispute, the committee could even be given authority to impose a 
> binding decision. 

Perish the thought! Pontifical truth committees!  When they mediate and 
render an opinion it is still just an opinion, and it may therby have 
greater weight, but please, no binding decisions.  Promoting an 
atmosphere of critical thinking would be a much greater accomplishment.

> All of these changes would consist of social self-organization of 
> Wikipedia users. They wouldn't entail or require modifications of the 
> software. 

Of course it's a social problen, and not a software problem.

Ec

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