•CAMPOS: The virtue of Wikipedia
Rocky Mountain News, CO -55 minutes ago
By Paul Campos, Rocky Mountain News (Contact) This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Garrett Hardin's extremely influential essay The ...

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We've got a well-written piece of blather here. Time for WR to get busy on the Comments!

Greg

There you have it. A comparison of the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons by Garret Hardin vs the Comedy of the Mismanaged Commons by Wikipedia.

And now we have the Perplexity of the Over-Managed Come-Ons by Wikipedia Review.

Yeah. I’m quite a fan of some of Paul Campos’s work, and he is capable of some excellent critical analysis at times, but there is a lot wrong with this article.

For example: “Wikipedia appears to be the precise reverse of The Tragedy of the Commons - a collectively maintained and "owned" resource that produces huge benefits to its community of users, while all the costs are borne by a small number of individuals. An online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, Wikipedia constantly is improving in quality because the sum of its editing process is positive over time.”

I know this is the sort of thing churned out say in Jimbo Wales’ Observer/Guardian article, but questions immediately arise: what ‘costs‘? what ‘benefits‘ are being claimed here? I for example am concerned about the type of ‘knowledge’ being produced and I would argue that ‘costs’ of knowledge being produced the Wikipedia way (its systemic bias, its POV warriors with so much power and time on their hands- are they ’the few’?) are going to have to be borne world-wide (if ’costs’ mean bad things happening as a result of the wikipedia way of producing ’knowledge’.) For some groups the costs may outweigh any claimed ‘benefits’,

Clearly the “ online encyclopedia “ CANNOT be edited by ‘everyone’: there is a power structure in place (one which often is abusive and exploitative, as we‘ve all seen) which prevents many people from editing- which is certainly one likely explanation for what Campos claiming that “fewer than two percent of Wikipedia's users ever edit (let alone create) an article. Even more striking, the vast majority of article creation and editing is done by a small subset of this much smaller group...in the vast majority of cases, contribute nothing to the enterprise themselves."

The problem I think is that Campos sees contributing to an encyclopedia as a ‘cost’, when it actually might be a ‘benefit’. If one person’s reality’ is enforced over others, then that is a benefit. Getting to control how knowledge is produced, which ’knowledge’ is to be privileged, wage POV wars and win them, are benefits.

Also - how do we KNOW Wikipedia is improving in quality, and that the ‘sum of its editing process is positive over time’? WHAT evidence is there to support such a vast claim?

Also- Wikipedia may not be ‘destroyed’ by ‘vandalism’ yet. But they you have to ask- what is ‘vandalism’? This is an over-used word on Wikipedia, as has been seen (rather like ‘harassment’). For some, trying to place an alternative piece of knowledge or correcting misinformation is described as ‘vandalism’ in order to maintain a particular POV.

Let alone comparing an online cyberspace entity with a field or the sea not working as an analogy.

And that’s off the top of my head to get the ball rolling! I’m sure others have additional specific criticisms they can make.

I am surprised at this article. Campos is well known for his book “The Obesity Myth”. Currently the Obesity article on Wikipedia does not include enough critiques of the various claims about the causes of obesity (for example those discussed and supported by Gard and Wright in their book “The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology (2005) Routledge, London.” so is only giving ‘one side of the story’. I’m surprised Campos hasn’t picked up on this, though he‘s mentioned briefly in the article.

Could a moderator move this to "News Worth Discussing"?

Might a moderator make this requested move?

Moderator's Note: I suppose I should leave a note here saying who did it.