New York Times Magazine: All the News That’s Fit to Print Out. Nothing is easier than taking shots at Wikipedia, and its many mistakes (most often instances of deliberate vandalism) are schadenfreude’s most renewable resource. But given the chaotic way in which it works, the truly remarkable thing about Wikipedia as a news site is that it works as well as it does. And what makes it work is a relatively small group of hard-core devotees who will, the moment big news breaks, drop whatever they’re doing to take custody of the project and ensure its, for lack of a better term, quality control. Though Wikiculture cringes at the word “authority,” in a system where a small group of people has the ability to lock out the input of a much larger one, it’s pure semantics to call that small group’s authority by any other name.
This is an important article, in part because it demystifies a process that many folks have found beyond bizarre. But the authority the author describes is a different kind than the top-down authority of traditional work. For the most part, the people exercising the authority are able to do so by general agreement in the community, not by fiat.
Anyone can take the Wikipedia content and create something new from it, anytime he or she wants to try. Yet people return to it, not because they trust it absolutely but because they have more faith in the processes used to get close to the truth.
on Jul 2nd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
re:
For the most part, the people exercising the authority are able to do so by general agreement in the community, not by fiat.
I don’t believe that’s the case, or if it is, a significant difference. In any democratic system (this era we’re living in nonwithstanding), an authority figure simply cannot go on ignoring the will of the community.
Certainly, the distinction with Wikipedia is that the editor-authority does not assign articles to be written by particular individuals. They do have lockdown privileges. (In a recent discussion about PONAR, one of your fellow Fellows asked me what I meant by “publisher” on the web. I explained, “The person with the ability to remove content.”)
on Jul 3rd, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Interesting distinction…
on Jul 3rd, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Jon, that’s a *publisher* on the web in your view? I could have sworn that was the definition of a censor … (re: “The person with the ability to remove content”) D.
on Jul 3rd, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Ah, semantics. Obviously a publisher has many responsibilities. But when it comes down to a question of authority, they have the sole ability to remove content. A censor, by contrast, only has that single authority.
on Jul 3rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
re: ” But when it comes down to a question of authority, they have the sole ability to remove content”
well… not necessarily, at least it doesn’t seem so to me: the ability to remove content seems to be *additional* to the basic function of a publisher on the web: say I used software that allowed me to post on my blog but not to remove any content (no deletions, no alterations) — would that make me NOT a publisher? D.
on Jul 3rd, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I’d be surprised if your publishing software lacked that feaure. I know I risk being seen as a free-speech heretic (I am more of a “realist”) by saying this, but there are certain types of speech which are unprotectable and are thus deemed for removal. They mostly include copyright violations, though as you know with PONAR I am including sexual slander as well.
Not that if you can’t remove it yourself, and if the content is a copyright violation, your ISP can shut your site down as part of the DMCA safe harbor provisions.
(I realize, too, that I am a bit of a heretic to the citmedia movement for pushing the point that responsibilities come with rights. But I think that Jimbo Wales and Craig Newmark understand this– through their everyday attention to their respective trolls– though I could be wrong.)
on Jul 3rd, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Jon, I just came up with that example to make it clear why I didn’t find your definition for a publisher on the web to be accurate. But it’s no big deal to me… (just a theoretical issue…) Good luck with PONAR! D.