I need a 12-step program

[deborah]

So. Um.

My name is Deborah K and I am a Wikiholic.


There are plenty of interesting discussions one can have about Wikipedia. I'm not personally interested in the Britannica vs. Wikipedia debate, though I'm sure it's interesting from Britannica's perspective. The two encyclopedias serve entirely different purposes; Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, for one thing, and can offer far more indepth treatment of certain subjects than a print encyclopedia can ever hope to. But discussing that's not where my interest lies.

(Paula Bernstein's "Wikipedia and Britannica : The Kid’s All Right (And So’s the Old Man)" offers a great overview of Wikipedia issues, well beyond a simple comparison with Britannica.)

So what about the accuracy of Wikipedia? I don't know why the experiment seems to be well suited for Encyclopedia information, while Wikinews is, in my opinion, a failed project and an example of the non-generalisable nature of the wisdom of the crowd. T. Scott questions the wisdom of the commons in Wikipedia and Knowlege part one and part two. Personally, I wish librarians and academics spent less time upset about what Wikipedia is not and more time -- since students and patrons are going to use it, yo -- figuring out how to use it well. The "but Wikipedia is not peer-reviewed / expert written / static / likely to be right / authorative!" rants seem to roughly parallel the "but Google is not structured searching!" arguments from a few years ago. You're right, it's not. But it's here, dammit, so we'd damn well better figure out what the hell it's good for and train people in its use. No, students should not be citing Wikipedia as an authoratative source, but it's still a useful tool, and we should teach people how to use it as a starting point for research.

Which brings us to my Wikipedia disease. Larry Sanger's "Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism" takes serious issue with Wikipedia's lack of subject experts for detailed articles. I personally have not experienced the hostility Sanger claims Wikipedians give to subject experts, but I certainly believe it's there. I am determined that the articles about subjects where I do have expertise will be good, well-researched articles that cite their sources so users who need authorative information can find it. (This is, for the record, Wikipedia policy.) As a librarian, I don't want to complain about why Wikipedia isn't useful to me -- I want to do my part to make it useful. (I wonder how much of this comes from my background in geekery as opposed to librarianship; I was steeped in the open source philosophy of "if you don't like it, make it better" long before Jimbo Wales ruined my sleep cycle.)

So I went on to Wikipedia and looked around. Not too many subject experts in Children's Literature, which is, after all, where I have my requisite academic librarian second Master's, so I think I'm making a real contribution there. Some of my other fields of expertise (fencing, tai chi, Doctor Who), on the other hand, were already babysat by content experts with far more expertise than me, so I left them to it and concentrated on the barely-started task of improving the children's literature articles.

Sadly, I'm so obsessed with this that I neglect tasks I should be doing, including creating articles I'm contracted to write for print encyclopedias. There's something in the Wiki-water: Wiki-crack?

(Ironically, I'm currently listening to Tim O'Reilly talk about Wikipedia and Internet history at the "Scholarship and Libraries in Transition: A Dialogue about the Impacts of Mass Digitization Projects" conference.)

Comments

thanks for writing about Dorothy Gilman!

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for writing the bio on Dorothy Gilman Butters. I decided by now there might be something online about her and I see you even have her birthdate. So I will work on sending her a birthday card.

Wikipedia Utility

[(Anonymous)]

Wikipedia provides a needed venue about A.A. For some 30 years, sick, recovering, and "recovered" people have been subjected to the comments of "experts"--who've written a little, taught a little, sampled a few people, and promulgated weighty theories on alcoholism, spirituality, "higher powers," genes, and pharmaceuticals, and more. Peer reviewed? By whom? You'll recognize the experts: Those who experiment and seek repetitive results rather than reporting hands-on experiences. I've had excellent teaching at two great universities (Cal/Berkeley and Stanford). But until I saw my first client, courtroom, judge, jury, brief, will, estate, statute, and corporation I never realized that the distinguished profs who challenge our minds and test our qualifications neither trained nor tested us to deal with the law as it is practiced in the office, courtroom, and evidence-gathering. In the field of "alcoholism," such disparity may suffice for those who write books, train counselors, or record what medicine and psychology discover, but virtually disqualify if the "scientists, academics, and scholars" have never seen, smelled, or tended to a wet drunk, or provided love and service to this despairing creature. A few closet case "experts" have actually "been" alcoholics, but you'd scarcely know it. And many have never,for years,dirtied their hands with practicing drunks or recalled their own misery. Their opinions are backed by grants, statistics, behavioral analyses, pharmaceutical tests, nutrition ideas, genetics, preventatives, the pardoning of relapses, and their flooding the journals, conclaves, search engines, and fellow professionals with their conjectures. Look too at A.A.'s own cops--lawyers and professionals--not even alcoholics who frequent the publishing structure. They foist on us what is "conference approved" and not, "guidelines," secularized literature, warnings about what should or should not be sold or read, and dogma that careful in-house research, historical writings, and new discoveries about real cures should be avoided like the plague. I've seen see-saw jousting on Wikipedia; and I saw it become captive to canned output for a time. No mention of real A.A. roots, the Bible, God, or even the many sources, variations, detours, and contending ideas. Plenty of professorial talk about some illusory "higher power." And statistics about recovery and failure in an organization which has an ever-shifting, unmeasurable mass of adherents coupled with open welcome mat for those forced to be there or are merely "rim-running" onlookers. I've researched A.A. history for 18 years and been an active, recovered A.A. member for almost 21 years. I've personally worked with hundreds of sick, despairing, mentally disordered, troubled, fearful alcoholics and addicts than I ever saw in my law office in 36 years. Over 2 million have visited my website to learn. And Wikipedia supplements our work, looking at its meanderings, trying to upgrade with source citations, and welcoming a variety of facts. That far overcomes the censorship of some "moderators" today. It's needed because the best information about God, religion, Divine healing, withdrawal, misery, and the love and service found in A.A. is seldom rendered through scholarship, experiments, random samples, or biased views about "religion," "spirituality," "higher powers," and statistics measuring healing by attendance, dry periods, and subjective yardsticks. The Wikipedia article did a good job presenting what's going on today in its A.A. site. It's well displayed, widely viewed, battered with biased tripe, yet containing carefully rendered experiences, writings, and thinking. It's wide open to courteous, well-presented, thoughtful additions, subtractions, and amendments. Perhaps this assures that people will learn more about early A.A. principles of Abstinence, Divine aid, Obedience to the Creator, Growth in fellowship through Bible, prayer, guidance, and reading, and Intensive work helping others. If some want to add, subtract, substitute, report, condemn, laud or question therein: Let them! www.dickb.com.