User:Cheeser1/On Wikipedia

THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE DRAFT, as of right now. It may always be. It may require more to make sense or be interpreted appropriately, and parts may be removed at some point. Please keep that in mind while reading. Also, while I have the essay template above, this is not an essay about policy or that I expect people to refer to at any point. I don't intend it to be authoritative at all. It is intended to be written by me only, as it is part of my userpage and is meant to reflect my take on the flaws of Wikipedia. It's not an essay in the sense that I wrote it as an essay, not as a part of Wikipedia's essay content. I guess.

This is very important: This is not meant to detract from Wikipedia in any way. Gödel's most important contribution to mathematics was a theorem stating that any reasonably structured arithmetic is fundamentally flawed. I'm no Gödel, but I'm just saying that his was a positive contribution, and I similarly intend no harm.

On Wikipedia
My personal opinion of Wikipedia is mixed. I consider it an invaluable reference at times, but as an academic and a sensible person, I believe it's fundamentally flawed. I'm not saying academe isn't also flawed, but Wikipedia lacks peer review and holds no one but the collective "editors" accountable, and only anonymously. The lack of merit notwithstanding, the bias inherent in Wikipedia is worse, in many ways, than the biases inherent to other forms of information-gathering, and while I certainly would agree with Wikipedia's main tenets in an academic sense, I must step back and acknowledge that the Western quest for knowledge and truth is highly problematic, in that it preemptively presumes that such truth and knowledge exist, and that we will find it. This bias is quite a bit more subtle, as is the bias with respect to more commonly considered factors (e.g. race, sex, gender, etc).

You see, there's more to the racist (or sexist, or ___) bias in Wikipedia than meets the eye. As a firm believer in anti-racist work, not as an issue of public policy, but as an issue of personal development, I am strongly bothered by most institutions' approaches to handling racial bias. Wikipedia is no exception. And of course, like so many institutions, Wikipedia falls prey to the circularity problem bias-prevention policy. Those who make the policies are almost invariably privileged and have almost never done work to develop racial identity and awareness (I'd ask Jimbo Wales if he knows who Peggy McIntosh is - no clicking, Jimbo!). The fact is, our perception of racism is affected by that very racism. When a white person states that there is a racial issue, or that there is not, people (white or not) tend to believe that person. When a person of color does so, the statement is invariably questioned and dismissed ("playing the race card"). No, I didn't make that up on the spot, it is true, but this is a personal essay so WP:RS doesn't much apply. And so when Wikipedia strives to do something, or attempts to correct something, or enacts policies to fix something, those policies are only as good as the editors and administrators who enforce and follow them. Unfortunately, the belief that neutrality may be achieved either through consensus-building, collective enforcement of NPOV policies, or dictates from upon-high that will make "most" people do the "best" they can - these do not solve the problem. In the end, the pens with which we write and the lenses through which we read are all broken. No collaborative effort can fix that - its not as if our collective bias must even-out to neutrality (if anything, it gets worse).

I also consider the standards of conduct on Wikipedia to be either too lax, or too underenforced. This is not me complaining about other users - it's part of what informs my belief that Wikipedia is a strictly nonacademic venture. Many users believe themselves to be sources of information (e.g. here), at least from time to time (I am certainly no exception), and this leads to conflicts. Furthermore, conflicts in academic literature are common; however, on Wikipedia, it often becomes a case of whose-viewpoint-is-more-popular. People aren't comfortable with conflicting information in Wikipedia articles, and often cite biases of outside publications to justify the inclusion of biased information in Wikipedia. Neutrality be damned, we are parrots of academe and the press, minus the journalistic integrity and academic credentials & review. Despite being easily accessible and wide in scope, this doesn't seem like an improvement!

And don't even get me started on how the standards of encyclopedicity seem to be so varied and strangely applied, and how articles often become magnets for absurdity and irrelevance. I used to entertain notions that I could figure out how each mathematical theorem implied others, and catalog mathematical knowledge. I know now that this is absurdity, as it would require more effort than it would ever be worth. I believe that Wikipedia sometimes veers that direction, and it certainly cannot. For one, alot of information already here is far too unimportant to be encyclopedic. But on the other hand, we have an article for every Pokemon, and not just trivially. I feel like one-policy-fits-all just doesn't work, and this is why policies are sometimes applied so inconsistently. I always thought certain topics would do better having fewer articles in a "general" encyclopedia, and then their own encyclopedia (or space), like Memory Alpha or some such. But then again, Memory Alpha is even less academic and more in-universe - it's not an encyclopedia, it's just a huge bank of Star Trek information. (Then again, what are we going for, encyclopedia or infobank? It never seems clear, despite a clear policy.) On the other hand, I'd like to see alot more mathematics on Wikipedia - even more than policy allows. Mathpedia. I don't know. Rambling aside, my point is that maybe different subjects require a different approach.

It's lose-lose on all fronts, but somehow, Wikipedia is still important. I still use it all the time. I still contribute, despite several encounters with users (or groups of users) whose conduct and contributions were (frankly) insane, unproductive, and frustrated me to no end. (If one more person tries to cite WP:IGNORE as a reason for ignoring consensus or WP:RS, I'm going to explode.) I am aware that everyone admits that Wikipedia will never be perfect, but I want to strongly voice my concerns - concerns that Wikipedia is far more flawed than it would admit, and that it is perhaps not the kind of resource it claims to be. I have my complaints about Wikipedia, yes, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist or that I won't use it or contribute to it. I'm perfectly happy loving and hating something (and this isn't even on the level of love or hate).

I don't know how to conclude this essay. But it's just a draft, and conclusions are usually boring anyway, right?