I agree that sites like Wikipedia appear to be reliable sources, but I see three problems:
1) If there is strong popular sentiment towards a particular interpretation, the lone dissenter will be edited out.
2) I suspect there are paid "contributors" or even "editors" who serve as the gatekeepers (to use today's popular word) that will remove or add to entries to get their desired page. Can volunteer contributors compete with someone whose job it is to monitor Wikipedia? Wasn't an edit traced back to some MP's office?
3) A few days ago, I was watching CBC news and a recorded story started off with reference to 215 Kamloops residential school graves. The Wikipedia entry says "investigations into the reported mass graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia have ended with no conclusive evidence of such graves."
CBC is fed to me, but I have to seek out Wikipedia. How many of us have the initiative?
Wikipedia can only be one piece of a broader, better internet. But I think, as a model, it's a good framework around how we can make things better.
1) Correct. Wikipedia is good at consensus, not dissent — but it still allows for the latter, but in the backend. It's a nice compromise.
2) Yes, but those editors' decisions are subject to review, appeal, debate, dissent, etc. You get institutional voices (politicians, government agencies, etc) trying to impose truth, but that tends to get overturned very quickly. The rule of thumb for most pages is incremental change, not overhaul. It means things change a lot gradually, Ship of Thesus style. So it does reduce the power of individual editors/contributors — which is a good thing.
3) The idea of Wikipedia being heterdox and not easily swayed to the 'politically correct' view is a huge asset, imo. Journalists are trying to approach the residential schools issue with sympathy and tact — as they should — while Wikipedia has leeway to be a bit more blunt and cold in its language. One isn't better than the other, they should exist as two sides of the same die.
I may write a longer thing about Wikipedia in the future!
I agree that sites like Wikipedia appear to be reliable sources, but I see three problems:
1) If there is strong popular sentiment towards a particular interpretation, the lone dissenter will be edited out.
2) I suspect there are paid "contributors" or even "editors" who serve as the gatekeepers (to use today's popular word) that will remove or add to entries to get their desired page. Can volunteer contributors compete with someone whose job it is to monitor Wikipedia? Wasn't an edit traced back to some MP's office?
3) A few days ago, I was watching CBC news and a recorded story started off with reference to 215 Kamloops residential school graves. The Wikipedia entry says "investigations into the reported mass graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia have ended with no conclusive evidence of such graves."
CBC is fed to me, but I have to seek out Wikipedia. How many of us have the initiative?
What is truth anyway?
Wikipedia can only be one piece of a broader, better internet. But I think, as a model, it's a good framework around how we can make things better.
1) Correct. Wikipedia is good at consensus, not dissent — but it still allows for the latter, but in the backend. It's a nice compromise.
2) Yes, but those editors' decisions are subject to review, appeal, debate, dissent, etc. You get institutional voices (politicians, government agencies, etc) trying to impose truth, but that tends to get overturned very quickly. The rule of thumb for most pages is incremental change, not overhaul. It means things change a lot gradually, Ship of Thesus style. So it does reduce the power of individual editors/contributors — which is a good thing.
3) The idea of Wikipedia being heterdox and not easily swayed to the 'politically correct' view is a huge asset, imo. Journalists are trying to approach the residential schools issue with sympathy and tact — as they should — while Wikipedia has leeway to be a bit more blunt and cold in its language. One isn't better than the other, they should exist as two sides of the same die.
I may write a longer thing about Wikipedia in the future!