Date:20/07/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mp/2006/07/20/stories/2006072001500400.htm Metro Plus Kochi
Thus far and no farther? Wikipedia's protected pages are closed to all editing and semi-protected pages are open only to registered users. What does this bode for cyber democracy? PHOTO: BHAGYA PRAKASH K. SUCCESS STORYAlmost everyone with a Net connection refers to Wikipedia. It must be hard being Jimmy Wales. After all, Wikipedia, the hugely successful online encyclopaedia he founded just can't seem to please its critics. For many months now, the website has been savagely attacked for lacking accuracy and reliability, with more than a handful of entries sporting incorrect, sometimes even malicious misinformation. The most famous case involved an entry on retired journalist John Seigenthaler, which at one point claimed he was suspected of being involved in the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy. Wales, and the thousand or so volunteers who help administer the site, responded in just the manner one would expect. They went about setting formal rules in place. These included formal bans on vandals defacing particular pages, along with protecting or semi-protecting pages that have been vandalised or are in the middle of an edit war. While a protected page is closed to all editing, semi-protected pages are open to users who have registered with the site for at least four days. The objective, explains Wales, is to go beyond the issue of just vandalism and look at increasing the reliability of the website. "Vandalism is a minor issue. Most vandalism is corrected within moments. A bigger issue is thinking seriously about editorial quality over time. We seek to be better than Britannica." Predictably, this has opened another can of worms. As anyone who follows popular blog circles or is a fan of Wikipedia has seen, all and sundry have now gathered online to bemoan what they call the end of one of the most interesting experiments in online democracy. Although Wales has taken pains to clarify that the proposed rules seek to formalise protective measures that are already in place and thus soften the controls, techno-bloggers such as Nicholas Carr have made alarmist statements such as: "Wikipedia is dead." Commenting on the formalisation of rules recently announced by Wikipedia, he says on his blog: "It (Wikipedia) died the way the pure products of idealism always do, slowly and quietly and largely in secret, through the corrosive process of compromise." And he is not alone. Many others, including social scientists and media critics, have been quick to condemn the move. Shuddhabrata Sengupta of the Sarai programme of the Centre for Study of Developing Society, for instance, says the institution of formal rules on the editing process will take away from the democratic and open-ended process that Wikipedia is. "This move will make it no different from any run of the mill canonical encyclopaedia," he says. Divided opinion Despite the very vocal criticism (even reputed newspapers such as The New York Times have criticised Wikipedia) that has been lobbed at the website, an equally significant number of users and commentators feel Wikipedia is moving in the right direction. Lawrence Liang, a researcher with Alternative Law Forum, explains for instance that this move has to be looked at in the larger context of authority of knowledge, which he says is the biggest problem for any form of collaborative knowledge creation such as a Wiki. "We need to be able to rely on the content and know that it is trustworthy. Wikipedia has moved from a hobbyist encyclopaedia to one of the first sources of references on the Net." Paraphrasing the superhero movie Spiderman, he says: "With great power comes great responsibility." However, many feel that with the emphasis on the reliability of information, the focus on the process of knowledge creation is being lost. Explains Shuddhabrata: "I think the interesting thing that Wikipedia encouraged in its community was the active exercise of a critical and sceptical attitude towards any received form of knowledge." This, he says, acted as a check against the excesses of subjectivity that might otherwise enter many entries. "Besides," he adds, "following the threads and discussions and the Wiki history of a given entry was an education in itself, and often laid bare the arguments and discussions around a given entry." At the heart of the debate is the larger issue of democracy on the Internet. Decisions such as Wikipedia's semi-protected pages, many feel, go against the spirit of the Internet as the last medium for a truly free exchange of information. Using the Internet, they contend, involves a certain degree of autonomy from the state, private corporations and strong interest groups, unlike traditional media. While Wales and his team say that this is the same ideal behind the processes they have instituted, others feel that no such explanation is needed. Nishant Shah, a Ph.D. student of cyber culture at the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, says since users do not pay and no economic transaction takes place, consumers cannot make such demands. As for democracy, the issues between democracy as a mode of administration and as an ideology are being mixed up. As a mode of administration, it is reflected in the transparency of the process. But it does not hold as an ideology since Wikipedia has always had a central power controlling its functioning. The Internet, on the whole, isn't democratic either, he adds. "The Internet has always been niche and discriminatory. The notion of a free and neutral space has been propagated by those with vested interests." And so the debate stretches on. Meanwhile, if media reports of a flame war on the Wikipedia website resulting from Enron founder Kenneth Lay's death (whether it was natural or not) are anything to go by, we might still be a long way from a reliable democratic experiment on the order of Wikipedia. But whether it will be reliability or democracy that flies out the window or if the unlikely pair can be properly yoked together is anybody's guess. RAKESH MEHAR To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
