< Pseudopedia
(wiki, wiki, forked, Proteus)





Pseudopedia, or "The Wikipedia", is an open-content encyclopedia-like website which has, at least since 2003, immensely popularized the concept of "Wiki" in the public eye. With countless pages on the widest range of topics, Wikipedia has become an oft-cited resource among the "tech" crowd and others. However, Pseudopedia also is a documented and troubling source of errors and biases, as well as social domineering tactics used to control content and reinforce cultural stereotypes.

See Policy Criticisms & Cases in Point

Growing Criticism

For the many who watch Wikipedia from afar and through other wikis, their mission to slowly build specific encyclopedic content, rather than verify content before publication, has incorrectly become synonomous with "Wiki". MeatballWiki has an article, "Wikipedia Is Not Typical", which focuses on this problem. Others point out that the Wikipedian goal actually misses the whole point of collaborative editing technology, which is to produce quality output which represents something "more true than not". Even though goodwill among "inside" contributors is a side effect of their dedication to a common goal, editorial biases and "edit wars" continually show up in the very public wiki process and final content.

Even some insiders have criticized Wikipedia's culture as "destructive" and "abusive". For instance, "The Cunctator" referred to its "vile mailing list" in December 2003, "R. K." called it the "Nazipedia", because he believes there is viciously anti-semitic bias, and there are debates which seem to focus on whether a "GodKing" or sysop pronouncement regarding "the truth" can or must be accepted as truth within Wikipedia itself. In discussions, it is the loudest of voices attracting the most supporters whom often dominate the direction. This is exacerbated whenever voting mechanisms instead of consensus mechanisms are used, such as the Votes for Deletion process. All such criticisms point to the reality of Wikipedia being a community first, a cult even, and an encyclopedia second. In discussions, it is the loudest of voices attracting the most supporters whom often dominate the direction.

A thorough analysis of Wikipedia's policies and practices reveals an Encyclopedia (yet apparently more of a "culture blog") whose goal is to objectively reflect the popular perceptions of the general public, especially of the dominant, "Wikipedian" majority perceptions about cultural, scientific and intellectual issues. There is an unquestionable, dogmatically imposed wikiculture, which puts the wiki's social dynamics above accuracy and Truth. Now that Wikipedia is podcasting, the problems described on these pages are only likely to be further amplified.

See Wikipedia Review and Criticism of Wikipedia

The "Wiki[pedia] Way"

Interestingly, Wikipedia founder, Jim Wales, worked under the title "God King" for several years, and encouraged new Wikipedia contributors and leaders to use his cult-like language and terms on the wiki, discouraging any opposition to his views and proposed wiki policies. "Jimbo" is also an unabashed Objectivist, one school of thought frequently recognized as a cult of pseudo-philosophers requiring strict conformity of thinking and uncritical support of Ayn Rand and her followers. Casual, though philosophical, email conversations with Wales can quickly become challenges for his beliefs and he will abruptly end them, using ad hominem suggestions throughout. Not surprisingly, Wales has become a cult figure within Wikipedia, supporting his community's primary function as a cult-like social network. Jimbo's biases are noteworthy only because Wikipedia has become the largest and most widely known "Wiki".

Any casual review of edit-histories at Wikipedia suggests that power users, who spend several hours a day making small edits to numerous pages, often dominate discussions, and comprise the most active elements of the administrative ranks. Yet, people who are qualified and interested in administrative functions can hold quite different interests from these power users. Thus, outsiders, new users, and those constructively critical are often blocked from discussions under vague allegations, such as "Trolling", or being a known "problem user". Such disputes are not limited to Wikipedia, but Wikipedia's administrators regularly invoke the power of their community, reasoning that such people are excluded for "behavioral reasons", not for critical policy arguments, when the truth was quite the opposite. Some administrators might not be adept at the personal or editorial skills which can best resolve conflicts among contributors. An inability or unwillingness among such untrained administrators to consistently articulate what they find problematic contributes to a less productive collaborative environment, and exacerbates conflicts.

The quick deletion or reversion of particular views and whole articles without discussion or refutation, eliminating the contributions of several authors on grounds that a suspect author contributed a "kink in the chain". Such actions can be a disregard of their own simple rules for deletion, as well as the conservatism reagarding elimination of text. Due to the limitations of their views and resulting software, the labeling of a suspect author's IP address, Pseudonyms and "sock puppets", as a banned author is quite common as well, and justifies for some administrators an extension of blocking tactics and invasions of privacy, based on ad hominem reasoning. Many other wikis, such as Wikinfo, have long moved to a model requiring logins, which prevents most casual vandalism, spam, and provides true Anonymous editing. When necessary, an account can be blocked from editing, still preserving the privacy of individuals, and only in rare cases are IP addresses or ranges exposed to the public. Wikipedia will likely never address this major tension between the "wiki way" and the way of the Internet.

More Questions

Yet another flaw in the management of Wikipedia is the lack of a common understanding on adding external links to resources into articles. Wikipedia (like many Wikis) has problems with wikispam, however, many users at Wikipedia feel obliged to remove most or all external website links added to articles, whether they are useful or not. This includes legitimate links to websites directly related to the article at hand, perhaps because that external site has advertisments. Further, those who regularly add external links will find themselves being labeled as spammers or self-promoters and warned to cease their efforts or face being banned. This external link paranoia has driven many good editors away from Wikipedia, while Wikipedia itself is becoming more and more commercialized and marketed as a product.

Lastly, the popular selections of adminstrators and merely casual verification of selected content is employed, instead of a more formal fact-checking process. Correction of inaccuracies or misinformation is never assured, or even common, and when corrections are eventually made, it can be weeks, months, or years after the misinformation has been served and forked to readers and to other web services. Justifying this effective dissemination of ignorance by clinging to the "wiky way" is no longer reasonable, due to the increasing popularity of Wikipedia, and its goal of representing the canon of human knowledge.

As a result, Wikipedia has distinct and well-known limitations as an encyclopedia, and functions primarily as a cult-like community. There is no special process or mechanism to deal with a political disputes, with factions that can't or won't reconcile their terms to each other, even when disputes arise over matters of fact. The community explicitly has refused to work out any useful policy for terminology disputes, identity disputes, even factual disputes, and prefers to allow itself, the community, to decide such matters. There are no designated "Editors" to make final content decisions, even in matters of fact, in any language. Instead, all of these editorial problems result in clear power struggles, forcing contributors, even those of strong qualifications, to answer to a mob of pro-Wikipedia zealots and hype-pushers, even when there is abuse of those contributors from others of no particular qualifications. Disputes are therefore never really settled, though they many be endlessly discussed, while actions are taken within obvious groupthink parameters.

(:en:Wikipedia:User:Stirling Newberry|Stirling Newberry) in January 2005 has said Wikipedia is in serious danger of "capsizing", over the issues of credibility and authenticity, but some critics suggest that this is already happening, that it is unavoidable. Wikipedia is an interesting social experiment, but it is certainly not immune to the dark side of its own success, with vandalism, spam, frequent internet attacks and huge bandwidth needs. The many valid criticisms offered of Wikipedia must be taken to heart, rather than explained away, if Wikipedia is to survive as a source of anything but "problem users" and false statements. Otherwise, it may only be a "pseudopedia".

A recent and revealing example of the vandalism and false information on Wikipedia is the falsely reported death of actor/comedian David Adkins, also known as "Sinbad," on March 14, 2007.

The supposed death of Sinbad was inserted into his article by an anonymous user, and the article wasn't noticed or corrected for 72 minutes. In the subsequent 36 hours, the article was edited more than a hundred times by many different users, including many vandals. It was subsequently protected from editing. By March 16, the hoax had been reported by more than 200 news sources in several countries. weblink and on the morning of March 16, the Drudge Report linked to the Associated Press article as "WIKIPEDIA Falsely Reports Sinbad's Death..."

Some Wikipedians held up the fact that the error was corrected within 72 minutes as a victory, while one user noted that this is five times longer than the "15 minutes of fame" promised by Andy Warhol weblink and that it was nothing of which Wikipedians could be proud.

Wikipedia spokeswoman Sandra Ordonez told the Reuters that numerous Wikipedia users, assuming that the correction was vandalism, switched the text of the article back to indicate that Sinbad was indeed dead. She claimed there are "various checks and balances" to ensure correct information on Wikipedia, but didn't explain what those chacks or balances were. weblink

General Criticisms

Various readers and editors of Wikipedia, and administrators of rival encyclopedias, see several valid bases on which to criticize Wikipedia. Readers and editors often have different concerns, but chief among them are:

Lack of Authenticity

Wikipedia's utility as a reference work has been questioned by many diverse sources. The lack of authority and accountability are considered disqualifying factors by most people. For example, librarian Philip Bradley acknowledged in an interview with The Guardian that the concept behind the site was in theory a "lovely idea", but that he would not use it in practice and is:

However, Wikipedians commonly encounter this argument. Wikipedia, they say, is a more of an independent source than most traditional encyclopedias, and the reliability is potentially greater than that of a traditional source, since errors can be corrected immediately. Yet, this is only a potential strength, as in reality, Wikipedia cannot be relied upon for accuracy, except on a limited range of topics. Wikipedians say one should not solely rely on any one source in their research. Yet, critics must counter that relying on a trusted source is the fundamental use of an encyclopedia.

Ironically Low Quality of Writing

A common Wikipedia maxim is "Out of mediocrity, excellence." The site founder admits that the variation in quality between different articles and topics is certainly not insignificant, but that he considers the average quality to be "pretty good", getting better by the day. The "competing" Encyclop�dia Britannica claims it does not feel threatened. "The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection; that premise is completely unproven," said the reference work's executive editor, Ted Pappas, to The Guardian.

It should be noted, however, that Wikipedia articles have been referenced in enhanced perspectives provided online in the journal Science, one of the most prestigious (and unmercifully selective) scientific publications in the world. The first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Wikipedia was "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light", by Hartmut Linden, in the August, 2002 issue. Since then, dozens of enhanced perspectives have provided hyperlinks to Wikipedia. A search on "Wikipedia" in Science's web site weblink turns up 43 instances as of December, 2004, with the perspective "Turning on a Dime", by Ulrike K. M�ller and David Lentink, as the latest in that date range.

Systemic Biases

Wikipedia's systemic bias of covering some topics in much greater depth than others is also considered significant, something that even the site's proponents admit. In an interview with The Guardian, the executive team of Encyclopedia Britannica noted that:

One user on a Wikipedia discussion board noted that the Wikipedia entry on Tony Blair was still several times longer than the corresponding entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, but this is a non sequitur. One should note that a vast number of Wikipedias articles cover topics which would not be included in print encyclopedias.

Pet Theories and Perspectives

A more difficult problem to address is that even when topics are covered on Wikipedia, they are covered only from what seems to be a "neutral point of view" to the current participants, which is not the same as:

• the current readership, especially not readers who encounter print or other uneditable versions
• the potential readership

While some critics have raised this issue within the Wikipedia Community, they seem to consider their criticisms to have been generally rejected. For example, a 2002 attempt to ask questions about what would be required to prepare Wikipedia for the one billionth user went nowhere. Since that time there have been numerous efforts to address the difference between neutral point of view and the perspective of new contributors with views typical of some large group of people, but not typical of the average Wikipedia contributor. In short, new contributors who do not conform to the prevailing Wikipedian consensus (where such a consensus exists) are generally viewed as trolls and their views are dismissed. New user's dissenting contributions are liable to be labelled as "POV" (a derogatory, if ironic, term on Wikipedia) if there is sufficient administrative support to attack or delete it.

In response to this issue, a group of Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia have established a WikiProject, Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. They have a list of open tasks which detail various areas they have determined need to be resolved.

Unecessary Editing of Original Authors/Scholars

All wikis benefit greatly from this practice. It is difficult to single-handedly write the perfect article, but it becomes easier when working together, at least, in theory. In fact, many editors experience a strong "team" effect on Wikipedia, but just as many experience unecessary edits and heartless reverting of their work, and this pushes would-be contributors away.

Such unecessary editing results in "edit wars" and "flame wars", in which two or more contributors revert each other's edits, contributing nothing to the community. Wikipedia, unlike Usenet, has the possibility and power of enforcing its community-agreed standards on new users, even when its own democratic, "wiki way" principles are in conflict with such enforcement.

Those familiar with interactions between individuals on Usenet, for example, are accustomed to such wars, and can easily tune them out. When these tendencies to academic conflict are combined with Wikipedia's powerful community activism, such wars are defended as "encouraging creative and collegial collaboration". Wikipedians believe there is no such thing as "other people's work", because there's no ownership of information, however, original authors will quickly counter that while information is free, expression is not, and so strong egos can and do easily collide over the control of their expressions. The community always wins, though, regardless of the truth of that free information.

Not only do people have the ability to edit other peoples' work, but they can edit other peoples' comments and votes on articles for deletion, thus changing or deleting other peoples' votes, making it appear that people made comments that they did not make, and removing other peoples' comments.

Tedious Battles of Persistence

Numerous contributors complain that editing on Wikipedia is a very tedious excersise in futility in cases of conflict. They frequently note that "fanatic", even "kooky" contributors with idiosyncractic, out-of-mainstream, non-scientific belief systems can easily push their point of view, because nobody has the time and energy to fight them, and because they may be higly-placed in the Wikipedian bureaucracy. Such wars can be highly academic, but nevertheless draining for all involved.

Partly in response to his battles with followers of Lyndon LaRouche, one prolific, high profile contributor, Adam Carr Ph.D., (:en:Wikipedia:User_talk:Adam_Carr|stated) in October 2004 that he would scale down his contributions to Wikipedia considerably because of, what he considers, the too open nature of Wikipedia. (:en:Wikipedia:User:Larry Sanger|Larry Sanger), a Nupedia and Wikipedia founder and early key contributor, sees this too-open nature as "anti-elitism", and calls for widespread changes to Wikipedia so that contributers who have credentials can pierce through the walls of the community.

Such sentiments are hardly isolated to a few of what the remaining Wikipedians call "problem users". The problem, though, is not to allow credentials to overcome facts, and so the Wikipedians have a point by being so open. The edit battles rage on behind the scenes, and the most persistent editors usually win, often those who are entrenched within the Wikipedian community.

Flame Wars are Reinforced by Design

Some people argue that talk pages of Wikipedia have ended up like Usenet, often seen as "just a bunch of flame wars" - bigoted statements on Wikipedian's talk pages are not uncommon. A response to this criticism is that Wikipedia is a "project", which makes it different from usenet, a debate forum. However, the fact that Wikipedia is a project makes flame war situations worse. On Wikipedia, flames can emerge when an editor feels their contributions they've put time and energy into editing are being ruined, especially due to the tensions listed above. On usenet, there is no such project for another user to ruin, and no text can be edited by other users. Wikipedia therefore becomes home to a multitude of turf battles.

For example, on February 14, 2006 at the Wikipedia article on the Iraq war *(link) contained a link to a recent video showing British soldiers torturing children. This section was repeatedly removed by a member of the United States army. When the section kept being put back into the article for the sake of historical accuracy, a user with administrator priviledges banned the contributor in order to silence him.

The actual material was not in question. Nor was its relavence to the Iraq war or its newsworthiness. If such politically motivated censorship is allowed, how can the general public trust Wikipedia? The objectionable material is shown below:

Assumptions of Bad Faith

Wikipedia's guidelines are to assume good faith of other editors, but despite this, many editors on Wikipedia persist on making bad faith assumptions about others. Some bad faith assumptions people make on Wikipedia are usually speculations about the intentions of the other editors. People are often accused of trying to use Wikipedia to promote a point of view simply because they either write about a controversial topic or make contributions that are biased. It is also an ad hominem to speculate about the agenda or intentions of another editor. Wikipedia editors should focus on the content of the articles, not the people who write the content.

However, people on Wikipedia should realize that even biased intentions can be made with good faith and could even be an attempt at neutrality. People are only human and they make mistakes. Though it could also be the case that the person claiming the contributions are biased is the one making the mistake.

Conform or You're Reverted

A common type of post on the User talk pages of newer users is often something along the lines of:

While this is just one example, it is not isolated, and brilliantly serves to illustrate that Wikipedia functions more like a community, one demanding conformity of thinking, than an encyclopedia, where knowledge and truth are paramount. Though many new users do indeed push the boundaries of what is acceptable to any wiki community, the sad fact is that new contributors to Wikipedia will be expected to keep closely to the party line on many issues, if they are to survive their edit wars. This feeds the problem of lacking authenticity, as well as the other criticisms, when such a user, now considered a "problem user" by Wikipedians, has true knowledge in an area in which the community has taken a false approach. The users' edits will be reverted, and the article(s) in question will remain hopelessly wrong or "slanted", solely due to the strength of the community, rather than the burden of facts.

Multiplied Search Results (Google Bombs)

Since Wikipedia, as all wikis, contains a large number of internally linked pages, it receives high rankings from Google for particular searches. This can result in confusing research, because often identical Wikipedia Mirror articles can overpopulate results. This makes it more likely that one's web searches will return identical and superfluous articles, a problem complicated by the fact that many, many pages on Wikipedia are wrong, biased, plagarized, or just poorly written. So, a Google bomb from Wikipedia on a subject of a reader's research can become a compounded research effort which does not benefit the reader.

The fact that Wikipedia and its mirrors tend to monopolize the Google hits means that what is written on Wikipedia will be read by a wider audience. This means that if a user perceives an article to be biased and cannot reach a compromize with the other editors, then a large number of people will read a biased article when researching the respective topic and the user will not be able to have his or her side of the controversy represented. This makes conflicts on Wikipedia a much more sensitive issue.

Promotion of Commercial Advertising

Wikipedia has been also criticized for effectively promoting commercial advertising, Spam, because it allows other Websites the right to fork, thanks to its GNU license. Many of these sites, unlike Wikinfo, merely use copies of Wikipedia articles in order to create banner and contextual advertising, with the help of customized code mining the wiki-content of the pages. This amplifies the Google Bomb problem above, and at the same time, encourages associations of commercial interests to the WikiSphere. In fairness, the GNU license also prevents Wikipedia from dictating how its content is used. Yet, happily allowing, even promoting, such bombing is tantamount to the self-promotion of the Wikipedia community - something which contradicts Wikipedia's pedantic "wiki way".

Reliance on Poorly Designed Wiki Software

Wikipedia's software has been criticized on many levels. It is less than elegant in many ways, both for end users and for developers, even since being updated with new "monobook" and other skins. MediaWiki development is a classic case of design by committee, with multiple overlapping extension solutions to problems, none of which may work as advertised. Instead of simplicity of form, MediaWiki seems programmed to be as messy and slow as possible, and for developers, is overly complex and buggy, leading to problematic installations on non-Wikimedia servers.

The main criticism is very much related to that against Wikipedia. Due to Wikipedia's relative popularity in the WikiSphere, its software, MediaWiki, has received undue exposure and may be installed for wikis which cannot afford to surmount its many problems, such as the need to constantly police the wiki because of security holes, Wikipedian assumptions of how wikis look and read, and generally poor or ugly design. More than any other wiki software, MediaWiki-run wikis can easily be overrun with wikispam and vandalism, and hog server resources more than any other wiki engine can. The exposure of Wikipedia has also allowed MediaWiki developers to become MediaWiki fanatics, pushing their own disorganized code and sloppy, Wikipedia-biased pseudo-"standards" on independent wiki installations and administrators.

The main fork of MediaWiki, XML standards-based GetWiki, as well as its developer, have been subject to propaganda attacks from Wikipedians since GetWiki's inception on Wikinfo in January, 2004. But MediaWiki also steals mindshare from installations which might better be served by UseModWiki, PhpWiki, or some other elegant wiki engine. The Groupthink effect on Wikipedia works just as strongly with MediaWiki development, where often byzantine code extensions are favoured over simplicity, only because the poor solutions come by way of a Wikipedian way of working, to solve Wikipedian demands.

See GetWiki:Overview for how issues are addressed in GetWiki

Overbold Editors

Wikipedia encourages editors to "be bold" when editing articles, however some editors are too bold and make drastic changes to articles without discussion. This can include:

• Merging two articles on topics that are vaguely related but are still better left in different articles.
• Renaming an article. Sometimes an article cannot easily be renamed back, if an editor has edited the article at the original name (which would be a redirector to a new name if it wasn't edited) since it has been renamed.
• Major reorganization of articles or talk pages.

When making such drastic changes, people should propose the changes to the talk page first to see what the other editors think about the change and give them time to state objections. However, some people are overbold with editing and make changes without considering that other editors will not appreciate what they are doing and do not like the burden of cleaning up the mess of overbold editors.

External links

• Wikipedia: A Techno-Cult of Ignorance
• Anti-Wikipedia 2: The Rise of the Latrines

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Some content adapted from the Wikinfo articles below under the GNU Free Documentation License.

• "Critical_views_of_Wikipedia"
• "Critical_views_of_Wikipedia/General_Criticisms"
• "Critical_views_of_Wikipedia/Background"

(last updated by Proteus, 1:36pm CDT - Tue, Aug 05 2008)