Nothing, at least as far as I am concerned!

I often hear criticisms of Wikipedia that just flabbergast me. Take a read of this article, and Page 2 in particular, where you’ll find this rather common comment:

But for all its breadth and popularity, Wikipedia is a deeply flawed product. Individual articles are often poorly written and badly organized, and the encyclopedia as a whole is unbalanced, skewed toward popular culture and fads. It’s hardly elitist to point out that something’s wrong with an encyclopedia when its entry on the Flintstones is twice as long as its entry on Homer.

My response to that is “so what”? So what if Wikipedia is flawed, because I don’t think we really need anything better.

The problem isn’t with Wikipedia, it is with the whole concept of an encyclopedia. Our view of Encyclopedias is skewed by childhood memories of what we thought they were, i.e. great books full of all of humanities knowledge.

But is that true? Is an encyclopedia actually a good, useful, primary source? Or is it a brief introduction to a topic for people not interested enough to read a proper book, or looking to get into a topic? I would argue it is the later, and think that actually makes Wikipedia close to ideal.

Before I get lynched, a quick experiment. Raise your hand if you have read an encyclopedia in the last 10 years. Raise your hand if you have even seen an encyclopedia in the last ten years. I would wager that, outside of 6 year olds and parents thereof, no one has their hand up. because encyclopedias are close to useless for most questions, and any use they do have is lost when they aren’t trivially easy to use.

No matter how good the material in the Britannica is, it is a product aimed at no one, caught between being an authoritative source, that is a source that in and of itself is relevant and important, and a brief introduction to a topic that points to far better, primary resources, in a format that is too much effort for its reward.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, has no such issues. We know it isn’t an authoritative resource, and that means that, rather than a nowhere resource, it is overtly a rough starting point. On top of that, Wikipedia has no barriers. It is all right there.

In this light, Wikipedia is, far from a poor substitute of Britannica, the ideal, at least as far as usefulness goes.

Sure, it has problems. Inaccuracies, poor entries, bad grammar and silly politics. But even with all that, a totally open, easily accessible Encyclopedia will always be better than a perfect closed alternative.

I am sure, at this point, many of you won’t agree with me. So lets take a practical example, using the NY Times excellent example of the Greek Author and Poet, Homer.

The Wikipedia page has a very brief background paragraph (that probably helps a large percentage of people who end up at this page and merely want to know who Homer Simpson was named after), a number of topics split by headings that, more than likely, answer the vast majority of questions people will have, and lastly extensive series of links and resources.

This, the links and resources, are the real gold of Wikipedia If one is older than about 8, an encyclopedia should never be the end of one’s research for anything but the most simple of questions. Wikipedia, unlike Britannica, sends you directly to sources that are authoritative and true experts on a specific subject, without any impediments or concerns.

And how does Britannica fare? You be the judge. More accurate, perhaps (I didn’t bother looking deeper, why should I?), but really, is that page better?