David Weinberger suggests that one of the factors leading to credibility for wikipedia is its explicit claim (in the form of warning tags at the start of articles) that an article may not be neutral, authoritative, or even accurate: "There's one more sign of credibility of a Wikipedia page: If it contains a warning about the reliability of the page, we'll trust it more. This is only superficially contradictory."
I'm not completely convinced that the warning label is as valuable as David states (if you approach me and say, "George, what are your views about quantum mechanics" and I prefaced my lecture with, "I don't know anything, but here goes", I can't see that contributing substantially to the knowledge space). To a degree, we should approach everything we encounter online/textbook/newscast with a critical eye. Wikipedia is essentially encouraging "critical thinking". To have someone do our critical thinking for us (i.e. "this article may not be neutral"), doesn't allow learners to build those skills themselves. I must admit, however, that the first several times I encountered the tag on a wikipedia article, it was arresting...but not as a means of assigning credibility...more of a novelty.
On a related note, I found much humor in Dave Snowden's experience with wikipedia: "Minutes later my changes were amended and Clint informed me that I was wrong about Snowden and had obviously either not read his work, or had failed to understand it."
Posted by gsiemens at August 16, 2006 9:43 AM | TrackBack