Why Wikipedia?

So, in a post I wrote a few weeks ago I quoted a definition from Wikipedia. I did not quote a traditional encyclopedia, a reference document, text book, academic journal, a highly respected news source, or even Dictionary.com – I chose Wikipedia as my source of information. Why?

But, first, what is Wikipedia? On its own pages it gives the following description:

“Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation...”

When Wikipedia launched, there was a great deal of speculation if it would ever be a reliable source of information. In other words, there was concern that the crowd-sourcing of knowledge and peer editing would never be a substitute for information experts. However, I think Wikipedia has not only prevailed but also flourished. And in doing so, it has shown what is possible when a community works together. In the 8 years since it was launched, Wikipedia has changed the way we look for, share, and consume information.

In today's networked society, often the best answer or solution is found through collaboration. The world is becoming more complex and at times it feels as though history has accelerated. By using new social web technology to communicate and pooling our knowledge and expertise, we can achieve things that were not even conceivable in the recent past. Locality is no longer a restriction. We can share, communicate, and collaborate with individuals across vast stretches of geography.

We have changed the way we obtain news and absorb information. When I was a child I remember my grandparents watching the evening news. It was at a set time, on a set channel every day. It was a passive act. Today my mother, now a grandmother herself, consumes and shares information via Twitter, Facebook, and other web portals. She participates in online discussions, rather than just receiving news passively.

In addition, the quantity of information available has increased since the advent of the internet and continues to grow. “Information growth is a distinctive phenomenon of the late 20th and early 21st century, which refers to the increasing amount and variety of information produced and circulated in various institutional domains” (The Information Growth And Internet Research programme, London School of Economics and Political Science). IDC refers to all this information as the Digital Universe and in May 2009 estimated the size of this universe to be 500 exabytes (or 500 billion gigabytes). We add more data to this Digital Universe every day with each picture we upload and share, each tweet we post, and each blog entry we write.

All of this changes the information landscape. There is more information. It is easier to share and collaborate. Knowledge and information are becoming more open. And Wikipedia has benefited from all these changes. It was launched at a time when the amount of information was rapidly increasing, sharing information was on the rise, and people were looking for new ways to sort and consume information. Wikipedia provided a place for people to share and sort information – both old and new. It gave the community tools to question and correct inaccuracies. It allowed people to participate in the storytelling.

Of course, there are erroneous pieces of information on Wikipedia, as there are in other, more traditional information sources. I think the tools Wikipedia has provided to mark and track inaccuracies and annotate citations has helped streamline the process to present the most fact-based information available. But, the critics will always point to the imperfections and flaws as a reason that information compiled by experts is better than that amassed through community collaboration. However, there are flaws in traditional expert information sources as well. One reason for this is obsolete information remaining after new discoveries have changed the generally excepted truth. I wonder how many references are still out there in reference materials, science books, and other information sources referring to Pluto as the ninth planet in the solar system rather than a dwarf planet it was redefined in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union.

Information is constantly evolving and we live in a society where often the story is told or the correct answer is chosen by the victor. Historian Howard Zinn was a master at retelling past events from the viewpoint of the average individual, not the hero. His book A People's History of the United States shed a new – and often surprising – light on generally accepted facts of history. There is always another side to each story. Therefore, we must always allow for flaws and corrections. In a world with so much information we will only hope to learn the full story when everyone is given an opportunity to participate.

What Wikipedia has done is demonstrated that through collaboration, the collective knowledge of a community can create a reliable source of information. By doing so, it has given the community credibility. Now, it is time we listen to the community's story.