Wiki Hate

There was a post on digg to an arstechnica article about a Wikipedia article on an obscure psychological theory. The Wikipedia article seems to have been posted by it’s creator and remained online for quite a while. As background Wikipedia has a policy against any original research. arstechnica thinks that is silly and that, since we have articles on pokemon, anal sex etc we should allow original research. This gets credibility because it’s in a news source, even though it’s only one person who has probably spent about 20 minutes thinking about the policy, while Wikipedians have probably spent combined years thinking about it. This isn’t what I want to talk about, but briefly, no encyclopedia has original research, peer-reviewed journals do that. Pokemon articles, while maybe silly to some, are not original research, pokemon actually is a product, citations can be given.

On digg though, it started another question,

I find it truely bizarre the animosity that wikipedia attracts. It’s as if these people have been contacted by an ancient evil god and now are on some sort of crusade, particularly that nut job Orlowski.

Where does all of this hate come from?

I don’t really think this article was that hateful, but others are. I think wikipedia is a new idea, and people historically don’t react well to those. If you asked most people if you could throw up a website, and have people build a good encyclopedia online they would say no. When confronted with exactly that they either are amazed and want to learn more, don’t think about it at all, or react negatively. Changing how you model the world based on evidence is not something everyone is good at. One commenter wrote:

I do not hate Wikipedia, although I am an outspoken detractor of theirs. I fear Wikipedia… In the Wikipedia world there are no real facts, just what people believe. If you can get enough people, specifically the Wikipedia editors, to believe something it will be promulgated as fact.

And another, similarly,

…if the Britannica editors let pink elephants slip in, they will be discredited and ridiculed, whereas Wikipedia editors… Well, we’re all Wikipedia editors, aren’t we, so now it’s my failing. Why should I be an arbiter of what is the truth and what isn’t? I don’t want such a responsibility.

Another thing that scares people, and maybe this explains the people that understand it more but still hate it, is this. Wikipedia takes away the comfort of believing your social “betters” are actually. The commenter above says, “there are no real facts, just what people believe”. Presumably the Britannica editors are people too? The idea that Britannica isn’t always right, even though they say they are “experts”, the idea that stronger better people aren’t watching out for you, that the people at Britannica, CNN, CBS etc are actually just as weak and fallible as the rest of us might be the most dangerous message of Wikipedia. But it’s not just their message, firefox is better than explorer, digg is better than CNN, and on and on.