The Future of Wikipedia - an essay
Wikipedia needs to develop instruments for article quality assurance and stability.
All technologies follow an S-Curve of development, with an early developmental or birthing stage, followed by growth, and then maturity sets in (and ultimately decline as something new comes along). As the technology develops, certain paths are followed and others foregone. The development of an online open-content encyclopedia should be similar. The software is certainly following a certain evolutionary path, as is the content that the software serves. However the practices that serve a technology well in its birthing stage may differ from those that serve in its growth phase, and those of course differ from maturity.
If we view wikipedia as a text, we can compare it against others Oxford English Dictionary, Encyclopedia Brittanica, or The Bible, Torah and Tanakh. The Bible has not been substantially changed in many years, although for a long time the text was in flux (see Apocrypha). The version of the Bible that individuals of a particular sect use has been certified by people long dead. Changes are slow and difficult. Forks, like Mormonism, are not widely adopted because the certifiers Joseph Smith or Brigham Young are not widely accepted outside a select group. Perhaps wikipedia is no ordinary text, the content available to cover in human knowledge is likely much greater than the number of words or their meanings, the limited text that can be printed in 30 or so volumes, or the "word of God" from two millenia ago.
However, as content is added to wikipedia, at some point diminishing returns on additional content importance arises. The first 10,000 new articles were likely on more important topics (loosely definining importance topics which affect more people and more people would express interest in) than the most recently added 10,000 new articles. The depth of coverage increases, but as a consequence, its relevance diminishes. An article on Broadway in New York City is more important than an article on Pillsbury Avenue, Southeast, Minneapolis, the campus street where I work.
This implies several things under the current open and uncertified editorial model.
- 1. The number of people who can check the accuracy about Broadway (millions) is greater than those who will know anything about Pillsbury Avenue (hundreds or thousands), much less someone's residential cul-de-sac. The more obscure the topic, the more the likelihood of misinformation standing.
- 2. Following Gresham's Law that "bad money drives out good", we might posit that "bad information drives out good". This occurs as fewer and fewer people exhibit interest in a particular article, the eyes on the article, like Jane Jacobs' "eyes on the street" declines. To date, this has been offset by the growing interest in wikipedia, but at some point, the number of people added to wikipedia is outweighed by the number of people already involved in wikipedia, and the rate of growth in wikipedia participants begins to decline. Whether this is a million participants or a billion, I do not know, but it is some finite number.
This potential for unverified obscuritanism can be offset, but those offset requires controls. The use of minimal or soft controls is indeed warranted, the least force necessary to achieve the objective. The simplest is to exploit version control and have the ability to know who has "certified" a version.
So if I know that revision 01.22.2005.10.33 of an article has been certified by User:Authority, User:Hobbyist and User:Professional, I may trust it more than an article certified by User:Vandal or User:Random.
Given the potential number of Users who might certifiy an article, and the likelihood I have never heard of most of them, Users should be allowed to join certification "clubs" (or rather "clubs" should be allowed to include members, through a process like Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship). There might be a group who certifies articles on biology, and another group that certifies articles on astronomy, and so on. There could be multiple clubs who certify articles (biology and astronomy might both certify an article on exobiology. There might be more than one astronomy club, if there are differences, and good articles would be certified by both, and controversial articles by only one. Clubs could team, so if Club:Biology and Club:Astronomy trusted each other, they would be part of a Team (say Team:Science) (and of course there might be multiple teams certifying the same article, or different versions, which would ultimately need to be hashed out in a wiki way or would stand).
If club members went off the reservation so to speak, and certified rubbish, they could be kicked out of the club, and they would no longer be able to speak for the club (their certifications would no longer hold the club imprimatur). (Similarly clubs could be kicked out of teams).
The important thing is that no one is requiring that only credential individuals be permitted to certify an article, but that if they do, users can of their own free will give that more credance than an uncredentialed person certifying the article.
Does this make wikipedia more complicated? Yes of course it does. There would need to be a some way of tracking who certified each version, and another way of tracking who was in what club (and what club was in what team). I could view the certification history of articles. At the top of the page it would notify me if there was a more recent uncertified version of the article, or the most recent version of the article certified by Team:X or Club:Y. (and give multiple versions available if there are competing certifications.
Does this make wikipedia reliable? Yes, as you would now know who thought what was accurate.
Additions
The ability to view only articles approved by Team:X, Club:Y, or User:Z. The ability to see Recent Approvals.
dml 17:09, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)