Technology News has a nicely detailed article up called Wikipedia and the Trust Factor. While the issues raised and the points made here won't be new to old wikians, it's a fair summary of some of the problems and attitudes that span across the wiki continuum. The author identifies some of the famous hoaxes at Wikipedia (including the one following in the wake of Colbert's suggestion that 'pedians alter the elephants page to show the trebling of the pachyderm population).

I can definitely see how discussions about the Wikipedia have become somewhat trite and cliche these days. Can anyone seriously posit that the Wikipedia is a hopeless mess and the Encyclopedia Britannica totally unbiased? Does anyone still buy that cliche that "any 6-year old could put up a definition of nuclear physics"? I find that more and more of my scholarly colleagues, including ones I would place on the right, are referring to wikipedia pages more and more in their discourse. Of course, I generally start any research project by first seeing what's available on the 'pedia, though (unlike too many!) don't generally stop there.

What's more interesting to me about the Wikipedia is how rhetoric works there. It's clear to me that a "rhetoric of wiki" has already formed and, indeed, already has some "method" to support it. Primarily what I'm talking about are "meta-commentaries" on subjects like standards of evidence, issues about "original research," what makes one page in need of "clean up" and another dubbed as a "stub?" Then there are rules such as the three-strikes policy with reverting a page; apparently, if you try to revert a page back three times you're kicked off the system. At any rate, one has to wonder if the problem isn't that Wikipedia has no "official" editors; it may have too many of the "unofficial" kind.

Even with its flaws, the Wikipedia seems to provide a good space for rational-critical discourse (i.e., "listening rhetoric"), particularly with pages that attempt to show all "sides" of an issue. Even if the folks engaged in this stuff aren't willing to listen to those whose opinions differ from their own, at least casual readers will have that opportunity. Of course, there is also plenty of shameless "win rhetoric," when fanatical groups clamp on to a page and use their combined might to further their dogma.

I'm also surprised to see that so few people have made the connection between Wikipedia and Lee Felsenstein's Community Memory project back in 1972. Unlike Wales, Felsenstein did have a clear Marxist agenda with his proto-wiki. Indeed, I think the story of Community Memory might have some valuable lesssons to teach the 'pedians. I particularly like the analogy of the project as an "information fleamarket." Sometimes I definitely can see how that description fits the 'pedia, but only if you realize that you can find some pretty neat stuff in fleamarkets.

However, I think one advantage that CM had over WP was the emphasis on the personal. With CM, you could describe in vivid detail your own experience in the Loma Prieta earthquake. I don't see that level of "I was there!" experiential knowledge in evidence at WP, except perhaps in the discussion pages.

I suppose at the end of the cosmos all references point to other references and so on in an infinite recursion error. Sigh. What counts for knowledge? I don't know, let me start...1, 2, 3...