The world of academia is in uproar. Non-professionals (read: non-academics, an important distinction that I’ll return to later) are polluting the Internet with information that is being read as truth. Knowledge is being produced by the unintellectual, and devoured by the ignorant masses. Popularity equals reliability, and whether or not something is ‘true’ no longer matters. We’re doomed to fall into a bottomless pit of ignorance, created by ‘collective intelligence.’
While that may be a bit of an exaggeration, the fear is still undeniably present. Every high school and university student has a story to tell about a teacher, tutor or lecturer condemning all who reference Wikipedia to instant failure. I feel it appropriate to mention that, at the time of writing this, a group working on an assignment two computers away from me were having quite a heated discussion regarding the inclusion of a definition found on Wikipedia. One girl was mortified at the idea of using it at all, almost to the point of paranoia about simply having a Wikipedia page open on a university computer. The other argued that Wikipedia is fine to use for simple definitions, but “maybe not so good for researching facts.” Both girls’ points are relevant to debate regarding the value of professionally (pro) created information, versus that created by ‘amateurs’ (am). Introducing: The Pro/Am divide.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger discusses the problems, as seen by the academic world, with spaces like Wikipedia. Bruns has quoted him saying that “somebody whose expertise rest on having done extensive original research on a topic gets no particular respect.” Here, he is discussing the phenomenon of anonymity, which is relatively new to the world of research. Wikipedia, as I have stated before, is a place where anybody can contribute to the sphere of knowledge. It is regulated by a community of users, rather than a traditional academic peer-review process. So the responsibility rests with the general consensus of a user-base, rather than with people who may have spent years researching a topic. If such ‘experts have not established themselves as a prominent member of such an online community, their opinion on a topic within such may be considered as invalid.
This editing process gives users a sense of collective purpose, of camaraderie. It encourages interest in topics, and wider research; the more relevant information one has to contribute to such a forum, the higher the status that can be reached within the online community. And yet academics continue to argue that the information presented is not necessarily correct, and therefore it is possibly even unethical to have it there; false information can be deceitful. While all this is true, research suggests that consumers are using such forums as a starting point for research, if they are indeed deeply interested in a topic. A study of Wikipedia traffic suggests that, while the rise during times when exams and assignments are due indicates that it is being used for research purposes, many users go on to do further ‘academically viable’ research.
Sanger discusses that a successful online encyclopedia, which Wikipedia claims to be, could not be successful without management by experts, and a rigorous audit process. He argues, I believe correctly, that this process of creation is what has made Wikipedia so successful, and evidence shows that such sites either are very well researched, or provide the tools for a user to uncover that knowledge themselves. These things concerned, it seems the Pro/Am Divide doesn’t necessarily exist- the two are simply working together differently to the ways in which they did in the past. Academia is definitely not under attack.
