The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is often referred to as an open
source project because it is written, edited and policed by a global group of volunteers.However, the open source label doesn't really fit Wikipedia. Free-for-all, in fact, may be a better match.
Open source, at least the way it's been used in tech circles over the years, usually connotes successful, volunteer projects like the Linux operating system, which has strict controls and is monitored by a handful of people who make the call on what is handed over to the public.
That hardly describes Wikipedia, whose own founder doesn't even like to call it open source. With Wikipedia entries no one calls the shots, and anyone, even anonymous users, can make changes to the publicly used product.
Simply put, the kind of confidence attached to Linux shouldn't be attached to Wikipedia, which is more a grand and very subjective experiment in collective writing than a rigid engineering project.
Two scandals have made that point clear. Last week, a former journalist named John Seigenthaler published an op-ed in USA Today blasting the service for an anonymously written article that had been on the site for four months linking him to the assassinations of both John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Then, former MTV host and podcasting pioneer Adam Curry was accused of editing out references to fellow contributors to podcasting technology in the Wikipedia article on the subject.
In response, The New York Times, for one, has banned reporters from using the Wikipedia as a research resource, according to a posting on Wednesday at Poynter Online.
The editors at the paper who made that decision have a good point. Unlike Linux, Wikipedia has no central editor like programmer extraordinaire Linus Torvalds and his small cadre of managers, who make the final decision on what goes in the software. Wikipedia is always being modified, so there's never really a "production version" that's been tested and deemed reliable. And because Wikipedia makes it easy for contributions to be made anonymously, it lacks the accountability that forces open source software developers to offer up their best work.
Credit and accountability
Most importantly, programmers relish taking credit for their
contributions. That gives them credibility among other coders, makes
them accountable when they produce something that doesn't work and
maybe even helps them land a good job.
"It takes two years to get 'street cred' in Linux software development," said Matt Asay, the founder of the Open Source Business Conference, a series of business conferences on open source technology. "The time frame might be different with different projects, but the system is basically the same — there are only small groups of submitters and all has to be filtered through captains or those who have final access to the code."
By comparison, Wikipedia had 45,531 registered members at the end of October, 1,854 of whom made more than 100 edits during that month alone.
In fairness, though he rightly believes Wikipedia has some of the attributes of an...
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Talkback
Nobody was more surprised that the New York Times' fact checkers were using Wikipedia than the regular Wikipedia contributors, as the Times is one of the sources regularly referenced in articles. I don't know how many ways Wikipedia can state that it is not authoritative and that researchers should not use it as a single confirming source (though any researcher who does that with any source doesn't deserve the name). There are disclaimers on every page, giant text on the front page stating "Anyone can edit" and an extensive account of identified limitations of the wiki written by Wikipedians themselves for anyone who wants to look. The people who beat up Wikipedia because it doesn't fit their own mistaken preconceptions are just getting tiresome at this point. Is this really the first time that they realized that everything on the web is not 100% correct?
Addressing the article, the way one becomes a "known entity" on Wikipedia is by creating an account and regularly editing, so I'm not sure how one becomes "known" while not previously being "unknown". It should also be noted that most editors have regular topics that they edit, so the subcommunities are actually much smaller than implied in the article. Someone who regular edits articles on the politics of South Pacific islands or Latvian pop music, for example, will quickly come to know, and be known by, all the other regular contributors in that subject. Familiarity and trust do play a large role in Wikipedia, even with the ability of anonymous editors to contribute.