This is a shame, since I have grown to greatly value Wikipedia and hope it does not get badly damaged:
Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopaedia, has been plunged into controversy after one of its most prolific contributors and editors, a professor of religion with advanced degrees in theology and canon law, was exposed as a 24-year-old community college drop-out.
The editor, who called himself Essjay, was recruited by staff at Wikipedia to work on the site’s arbitration committee, a team of expert administrators charged with vetting content on the on-line “free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit”.
The open-source and on-line dictionary has been a roaring success in its brief life. I use it constantly both at work and in my spare time. I also consult other reference tools and would strongly advise people never to rely on just one source for the sort of information that Wikipedia and its rivals provide. But it is a shame that this character hoodwinked the site in this way. The best way for Wikipedia to handle this is put its hands up, admit the problem and deal with it.
Which is more than one could say about some organisations.
Is Essjay in fact an expert on theology and canon law? If he is, whilst it is unfortunate he lied about his formal qualifications, I really do not care over much if he does nevertheless know what he is talking about.
I know many autodidacts who are vastly more knowledgeable on their favoured subjects than many who have a great line of letters after their names.
Oliver Kamm recently made a good point on a post about Wikipedia when he said that consensus is not the same as truth, which kind of kicks the legs out from under a lot of Wikipedia’s content. I find that Wikipedia cannot be relied upon for accurate information about many serious topics, especially if the topic in question is controversial.
That said, it is a great source of information for all those topics which an encycleopedia does not normally carry, and the specialist entries can be very useful indeed. For instance, if you want to know what year they started making a certain model of Landcruiser, Wikipedia is the place to go. I really hope it doesn’t collapse.
I am far more concerned about highly indoctrinated, er… educated opinionators skewing the articles in ways difficult for someone outside of the field to understand.
In an email exchange with some friends here, I said that I think that knowledge is becoming less important than thinking ability. As there is no complaint I’ve read yet that his work is flawed, I’m not ready to jump on the all-power-to-academics band wagon.
As for wikipedia in general, content problems should be addressed in the way the articles are updated, modified and moderated, not in the credentials of those doing it.
Content must always matter more than credentials.
Quite right all above.
It is the quality of his work not whether he possesses the right bit of paper that counts.
The way Wikipedia work is to rely on published data in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS#Reliable_sources not on somebody’s personal opinion. Even the subject of biographical articles is not allowed to use his own words as a reference. Thus, the false qualifications of Essjay are irrelevant (or almost irrelevant) to the quality of the articles he co-edited.
OTOH been elevated in positions of trust (checkuser, arbitrator, etc.) he might put people into troubles (including real-life troubles) if acting inappropriately. To the best of my knowledge it was not the case.
While I agree that the quality of the work is more important than the qualifications of the person doing it, I think the honesty and integrity of the person is generally of equal importance. It is a big deal that he lied about it. And I think the potential problems that come from having a compulsive liar in an important editorial role for an encyclopedia are obvious.
Err, doesn’t the quality of his work actually prove the Wikipedia concept?
Does anyone else see parallels with William Chester Minor?
How much does the BBC cost hapless taxpayers? About £10 billion a year, give or take. How much does Wikipedia cost hapless taxpayers? Nothing.
And yet, despite this lack of taxpayer-derived loot, and despite its other current problems, Wikipedia is about 100 time more believable than the BBC.
Discuss.
Yes, but I’m not sure the parallels are important. If Simon Winchester’s book is accurate, Dr. Minor never misrepresented himself. As Michael Jennings pointed out above, that is an important factor in this case.
Many, perhaps most, of the contributors to the original OED were amateurs, and in that sense the original OED is similar to Wikipedia. But the original OED did have an editor with credentials. I’m a strong supporter of Wikipedia (and a fairly regular contributor), but I don’t think the Dr. Minor case has much bearing on the Essjay case.