Wikipedia and Britannica Debate Continues

I’ve received a lot of feedback to my position on Wikipedia brought about by a recent Wall Street Journal article. The feedback has been productive. Its helped elucidate some of the key differences between Wikipedia and Britannica.

The foremost of these differences seems to be audience expectations.

There is one world, online, where people want to be part of the process of growing knowledge, of being heard and sharing. Knowledge in a particular area, for them, is something malleable and something they use to identify themselves with a community.

Then there is another world, offline, where people just want the facts, as they are. Doesn’t have to be latest greatest. Doesn’t have to be with a grain of salt. Something straightforward they can learn and then get on with their lives. Knowledge in that particular area, for them, is something they want to find out about, but not something they want to give too much commitment to.

This gets to the core of our definition of knowledge. When someone wants to “look something up” what are they hoping to find? What do that want to do with that information? How do that want to interact with that information?

Wikipedia presents a different way of interacting with knowledge.

Its seems to have unlocked a lot of pent-up demand for people to be heard. But I’m not sure its the most productive way for society as a whole. I’d worry if kids did science reports based on Wikipedia. Or if they protested the whole format of a report and pushed, instead, for an open dialogue with their class on the subject.

There is a place in this world for a fixed grounding -for clear definitions of what we know, delineated from speculation and opinion. Perhaps Wikipedia should have a disclaimer that the contents are a work in progress, take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps it would be more accurately filed in the category of an open, collaborative publishing site and not an online encyclopedia.

          

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 9:42 am and is filed under Google, SEO & Collaborative New Media, Software and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.