April 10, 2008
Publisher Compares Wikipedia to Oxford English Dictionary
Over at the Oxford University Press’s blog, OUP publisher Niko Pfund paid Wikipedia the ultimate compliment: He compared it to the Oxford English Dictionary.
An excerpt from his comments:
“I’m actually increasingly bored by this question of whether Wikipedia is good or bad, and even more so by the easy vilification of it, a reaction often rooted in professional self-interest. After all, the Oxford English Dictionary, arguably the greatest reference work in the English language…found its origins in a wiki model, whereby scholars put out the word to English speakers far and wide that they would welcome hard evidence of the earliest appearances of English words. The response was astonishing (never underestimate the enthusiasm of amateur lexicographers), so much so that the building in which the word submissions were kept, called The Scriptorum, began to sink under the weight of all the paper. Wikipedia is here to stay and its evolution will be one of the more interesting publishing and technology stories in the next decade.”—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Thursday April 10, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Boston U. Students Tell Judge: Recording Industry Group Uses Unsavory Business
Next: Is E-Publishing at Columbia U. on the Ropes?
Intellectual honesty and courage is so 19th Century!
— S. Britchky Apr 10, 07:15 PM #
Honesty and courage is vogue in any century!
— G. Smith Apr 10, 07:59 PM #
Fair enough. But those submissions were then verified on standard forms (the infamous “slips”) before being submitted to editors who were selected for their well-demonstrated expertise: the editors produced the OED, not the readers. The work of the latter has always been recognized, but it tended to overemphasize unusual or obscure meanings. The parallel is more than a little fuzzy.
— Tom Farrell Apr 11, 07:44 AM #
Points from Tom in #3 well taken. The Wiki moded “learning” model is not rooted in traditional university venues. Users are not lectured then tested. It’s Taster’s Choice vs. Starbucks. Remember the assaults from the print media establishment on the fledgling USA Today — what did they call it — McPaper? As my old Classics 222 prof used to say: “You pays your money you takes your chances!”
— Douglas Apr 11, 08:23 AM #
I’m never terribly impressed by the idea that “experts” should be the last word on knowledge. As a professor, I know I am supposed to warn my students against the evils of wikipedia but I don’t. I encourage them to participate in it and have assignments in which they are required to research topics and submit contributions. I also understand why academics are afraid of it. If we admit that it is possible that laypeople can contribute in a meaningful way then we have to realize that all knowledge is fallible which means we are not gods. All experts verify knowledge based on their personal subjective preferences and beliefs. Remember the expert who testified before congress that a woman could not get pregnant when raped if she didn’t enjoy it? He had credentials (the ingredients) but obviously no ability to put together information in any meaningful way (still not a chef). Rise up and participate – it tastes better that way.
— Hannah Mendoza Apr 11, 09:46 AM #
I recently read The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, and I too was struck by the similarity to Wikipedia: the seemingly impossible scope and using countless volunteers to tackle it.
For those who scoff at the comparison, remember that Wikipedia is only 7 years old. The OED took considerably longer.
— Chris Apr 11, 09:55 AM #
I have to wonder whether the critics of Wikipedia really believe — or want us to believe — that the only standard worth achieving is total correctness and completeness. Do they imagine that the Encyclopaedia Britannica ever achieved that standard? Or even that their own work does? Not in this world, I think, not while the process of research and scholarship continues.
Surely the goal for an encyclopaedia is usefulness. Now I admit that the absence of gross errors, or at least a system for correcting errors quickly when they’re identified, is a part of usefulness, but there are other considerations, such as whether what’s provided to the reader is a comprehensible and fair summary and introduction, meeting the reader where he or she is. If I know absolutely nothing about, oh, Hittite art, does this article give me a framework and tell me where I ought to look next? That’s the standard by which we ought to be judging Wikipedia, and I’d say it’s doing pretty well.
— Chris Redmond Apr 11, 10:07 AM #
Too often I see the debates about Wikipedia situated within notions of texts and readers, perhaps stemming from the kinds of debates that take place in English departments about the authority of texts. But I don’t think this is the way to understand Wikipedia or any wiki technology. Wikis work because they use the principles of distributed cognition, which view learning as distributed across members of a culture. If you think about learning as only residing inside the head of a person, then you may be resistant to the idea that “knowledge” or learning reside across people and material artifacts. Wikipedia uses this notion to the fullest…that together, we know more.
— Kim Jaxon Apr 11, 11:22 AM #
A better analogy might be comparing the OED to Urban Dictionary — both have volunteers; both provide useful linguistic data (Urban Dictionary is a lexicographical gold mine), but OED is edited and UD is not. At least entries on Wikipedia may be revised — though the only credible sourcing, according to Wikipedians, is other online info, which strangely insulates Wikipedia from knowledge created in more traditional venues. But UD, so far as I can tell, doesn’t undergo revision, just addition.
— Dennis Baron Apr 11, 11:26 AM #
Just a quick note to chime in and say that the above-expressed point about the definitional importance of vetting and of established systems for high-quality sustained review to the OED is of course right on. My intention was not to “compare” Wikipedia to the OED but to point out that the initial gathering of information in both instances is rooted in not dissimilar approaches, which then diverge radically once the information had been assembled. My point about how Wikipedia is going to be interesting to watch is rooted in this exact issue, given that Wikipedia is now struggling to ascertain how to balance its anti-elitist, democratic ideals with accuracy and reliability (especially on the sort of flashpoint issues—JFK assassination, 9/11, etc.—that compel people to battle endlessly over their definition). Also, to clarify my comment about finding the question of whether Wikipedia is good or bad “boring,” what I find tedious is the inability, or more often unwillingness, of very smart people to identify the ways in which their self-interest can color their perception, and thus blunt their normally sharp analytical skills. I suspect that if you had asked many publishers—especially those with an education mission such as OUP—ten years ago whether they would support an information-gathering mechanism that enables the generation of vast amounts of information in a largely democratic manner at no cost for delivery to those who otherwise don’t have access to reference materials or are unable to afford these, many would have found the idea quite appealing, from the standpoint of human welfare, social justice, etc. None of this is to gloss over the many issues facing Wikipedia but, returning to my earlier point, is simply to say that it’s going to be fascinating—and already is, hence the endless number of articles on the subject—to watch Wikipedia grapple with this question of authority, in an world—especially an academic reference world—where what works for Ivory soap (99.44% pure) translates to a disastrous ratio of accurate : inaccurate. Finally, in response to Chris’s point that Wikipedia took only 7 years, the reasons for this are obviously in part technological, but the other reason the OED requires such an enormous support system and staffing and is so labor- and time-consuming is quite simply that getting it absolutely right is really, really hard.
— Niko Pfund Apr 11, 12:15 PM #
After sitting through an hour long rant about Kaufman’s entry on Nietzche in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and how lamebrained and inaccurate it was, I long ago gave up the notion that anything is either the first, last, honest or definitive word on anything. This revelation has made cocktail parties much more enjoyable.
— the first marci Apr 11, 02:44 PM #
We at Wikipedia have never promised “reliability”, because we fairly obviously can’t – it’s an encyclopedia just written by people. What we are is useful. But you can’t leave your critical thinking skills at home. Unfortunately, we’ve yet to come up with a model for something as useful as Wikipedia that allows the reader to leave their brain at home.
— David Gerard Apr 13, 07:00 AM #
To say that ‘the Oxford English Dictionary …found its origins in a wiki model’ seems to confuse the tool (wiki) with the approach (collaborative compilation of knowledge). Clearly the tool is separate from the collaborative approach, as wikis can be used in many ways, not all collaborative: see the read-write matrix for examples.
Perhaps a more accurate statement would be ‘The OED and Wikipedia are both examples of a highly collaborative approach to developing a major body of knowledge.’ This probably sounds a bit like nitpicking but I believe the distinction is important. Confusing the tool with the approach can lead to errors:
* We assume that implementing the tool will automatically give rise to the approach. It won’t – we need to explicitly manage this. * We assume that without the tool we can’t implement the approach – we can, just look at what the OED editors achieved without a wiki!
— Paul Left Apr 18, 06:50 PM #