steve kwan user experience designer

Thoughts on Wikiality and knowledge management

(August 3rd, 2006 - 1:00AM)

View Stephen Colbert's Wikiality segment

On July 31st, Stephen Colbert coined a new term: Wikiality. I think he's making a point of coining new terms every now and then to keep himself relevant. But that aside, Wikiality basically means a reality where the truth is determined by group consensus, not actual facts. This, of course, is making reference to Wikipedia, the newly famous online encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is a very "Web 2.0" encyclopedia; in other words, it isn't dictated by an ivory tower full of researchers like Encyclopedia Britannica. It's dictated by the people. Anyone can go into Wikipedia and add or edit an entry. The security precaution Wikipedia uses is essentially the wisdom of the crowd: if someone posts something incorrect, it's up to the other users to correct it. On the plus side, this means that Wikipedia grows and updates at a rate far faster than a traditional encyclopedia could. The downside is that there is absolutely no guarantee that what you find on Wikipedia is accurate or research worthy.

Stephen openly challenged his viewers to vandalize the Wikipedia page for elephants to prove how unreliable the encyclopedia can be. And he succeeded; the page has been extensively vandalized. Colbert's made his point.

Gotta agree with Stephen on this one. The Web 2.0 community concept has proven extensively powerful when it comes to sharing your photos, distributing your videos, and bookmarking sites. However, there are some situations where mob rule isn't a good thing, and one of those is knowledge management.

I work with archivists responsible for recording our history, and I know the painstaking labour that goes into the process. The average Wikipedia user simply does not have the training, and quite frankly the level of trust, to perform such a task.

Wikipedians would argue that they exercise the same level of discipline as professional researchers at professional knowledge institutions. That may be true, but that still leaves the issues of training and trust. Let me outline the differences between the historian's and the Wikipedian's documentation processes.

How a historian writes an article

1. The historian sees the need for clarification or answers to a particular question.
2. The historian compiles data from hundreds of archives and other sources.
3. The historian summarizes the data in a concise, professionally written article.
4. The historian submits the article to his peers for review.
5. The article is thoroughly checked for factual correctness.
6. The article is published in a well-respected and trusted magazine or website.

How a Wikipedian writes an article

1. The Wikipedian sees the need for clarification or answers to a particular question.
2. The Wikipedian either compiles data from hundreds of archives and other sources, or cobbles together data from memory and questionable websites.
3. The Wikipedian summarizes the data in a concise, professionally written article.
4. The Wikipedian submits the article to his peers for review.
5. The article is thoroughly checked for factual correctness, most likely by reading other articles on Wikipedia.
6. An army of other Wikipedians pore over the article and change it until everyone agrees on a finished version.
7. The article is published on Wikipedia.
8. A teenager edits the article, replacing each proper noun with the name of a professional wrestler.

To summarize, there are times when group wisdom doesn't always prevail. One such time is when authority is just as important as content, and Wikipedia is a prime example of questionable authority.