Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-05/Book review

Let me begin with my thesis about this book, written decades before Sanger and Wales ever thought about creating Nupedia or Wikipedia: this is a book everyone who contributes to Wikipedia should read &mdash; even the Wikignomes and devoted vandal fighters who aren't directly involved in creating content. I say that partly because this book prepared me for the ideal of Wikipedia many years ago, and partly because it is available as a free PDF online &mdash; but also because it presents the idea that everyone has the opportunity to actively participate in the adventure of intellectual discovery and publication.

While this book covers much of the same ground that the essay-writing books assigned to college freshman have &mdash; how to find an idea, how to do research, and how to write a paper &mdash; it also goes beyond these topics. Such as how to find a topic which truly interests you, rather than one that will appeal to your teacher; how to find resources to use in your research, since a serious scholar has outgrown the high school library; and how to find kindred spirits who will properly understand and appreciate your work. Specifically, it addresses the question: "If I am not writing an essay to get a favorable grade from my professor, then what is my motivation? Whom am I writing for?"

One of Ronbald Gross' primary theses is that true intellectual activity is outside of the academic setting. Some of the most enjoyable passages are his short profiles of various independent scholars, examples of a tradition which includes Eric Hoffer, Barbara Tuchman, and I. F. Stone. As Gross writes at one point:

Yet once we cast a fresh eye over the intellectual landscape, we find that serious inquiries are being pursued outside academe far more frequently than we might have imagined. Taken together, these inquiries constitute much of what is most exciting in our cultural life. For the people conducting those inquiries, their research is not merely a "job", it is a passion that they have developed into a vocation. Their motivation is not to make a living, but to know, understand, and communicate. Scholarship is their joy, and not merely their job. (p. 8)

He also addresses such problems we would-be scholars never confronted in school, such as pitfalls in our research or thinking, managing our time and energy, and perhaps most important of all, getting the necessary recognition &mdash; or even attention &mdash; for our work. Independent scholars might be free of the typical in-fighting and politicing that characterizes many academic settings or think tanks, but we are also at risk of finding ourselves isolated. Thus we need to build networks where kindred souls share research and exchange ideas &mdash; in some ways, what we have in Wikipedia. Sadly, instead of feeding this interaction, it appears that the emphasis of the Wikipedia community has drifted to emphasize other matters, like enforcing policies or finding new ways to automate tasks. Wikipedians ave grown so worried about the reputation of our project that we are becoming our own worst enemies, driving away the kindred spirits we need to keep our project running in order to appease the professional experts and inhabitants of academe.

Yet these individuals need the independent researchers and scholars more than we need them. As Gross points out at another point:

The great mining companies still rely on independent prospectors to find some of the best new sources of ore &mdash; the land masses to be explored are so vast that no company's own organized effort could cover them. Professional astronomers have long relied on amateurs to monitor celestrial phenomena of various kinds &mdash; simply because the heavens are too immense to permit the few observatories to gather more than a fraction of the needed data. Those who study the sea encourage divers and serious beachcombers to submit notes of observation and samples of marine life through the American Littoral Society &mdash; the seas, too, are simply too large for the professionals in the field to be able to obtain all of the materials and observations they need. Social scientists have begun to realize that 'this country is so big, so varied, so almost incompassable, that social research cannot have enough observers who will break down its momentary generalizations and open up new views,' in the words of David Riesman. (p. 14)

Perhaps the reason Wikipedia has succeeded is that the combination of the hardware of the Internet and the software of the Wiki has allowed a large group of people to collaborate inexpensively on a valuable yet, basically routine and unimaginative project &mdash; writing an encyclopedia, a reference work. Knowledge is so big, so varied, and almost incompassable that it requires a team to research it and arrange it so others find it useful in opening new views. However, being harmless drudges, far too often the average Wikipedian is overlooked in favor of those who would expound on policy or program new tools for them to use.