A reply to "Wikipedia criticism, and why it fails to matter"

"Vipul Naik wrote a blog post "Wikipedia criticism, and why it fails to matter" (and follow-up) where he discussed many critics of Wikipedia, and raised a question:

Does criticism of Wikipedia serve any purpose (constructive or destructive) other than being an excuse to fill journal columns and blog space (I might note that the critical articles I wrote about Wikipedia have driven the most traffic to my blog)? it is hard to say. I want to argue here that it does not at least serve the obvious purpose of keeping potential readers away from Wikipedia.

For my reply, let me put it this way:
Part of my motivation has been the delusion that I can make a (small) difference in the world. But I am not nearly so deluded as to think I can significantly keep potential readers away from Wikipedia. Indeed, as I repeatedly try to point out that Wikipedia's success has been driven by an implicit subsidy by Google (implicit meaning there's no deal, no specific arrangement, but rather an effect overall), it logically follows my ability to compete with that is, in practice, nil."

There's also something akin to the Streisand Effect in that when somebody tries to stop others from seeing something, that only calls attention to it and actually increases its viewership. Thus, the attempt of WP insiders to stop people from seeing WR via BADSITES actually increased the popularity of this site, and similarly, all the strident criticisms of WP here and elsewhere may have only increased traffic and interest in WP (especially in the earlier stages of WP when it was less well known than it is now).

Negative reviews might actually reduce viewership of something when it's something (like a movie in a theater, or a CD or book) that actually costs money to see/hear, but when it's free on the net, nasty stuff may actually create curiosity that brings more people to it.

I don't understand. Are you saying that people flocked to WP in droves because of strident criticisms?

WP sitting at the top of google searches since around 2004 brought people to Jimbo's site. I don't think strident criticisms, which were hardly in copious supply back then, had anything to do with it.

If each comment, positive or negative, contains a link to Wikipedia, then it gets the Google juice either way.

That is what I mean when I say that a pure connectionist brain can't do logic.

Jon

Wikipedia doesn't need the google juice from us, it was already top of the pile way before this site appeared.

Among the thousands, or perhaps millions of links to Wikipedia articles, both internal and external, links from critics have surely been an irrelevant droplet in a vast ocean.

Not what I'm saying.

I'm saying that there's a fundamental flaw in all of the current page ranking algorithms. The basic flaw has its roots in the history of AI, tracking back to a crack in the foundation of one major wing, but never mind that now. You can see that Google is trying to finesse the problem in a post hoc manner, but the flaw is too deep to fix that way.

It's a flaw in the sense that the system as a whole doesn't do what it was intended to do, namely, to bring the highest quality information from ground to figure.

It's a flaw that can be exploited by agents who don't care a fig about the design intention, in the same way that any system vulnerability can be exploited by agents who have divergent aims.

The fact is that the Google + Wikipedia system doesn't respond to criticism, to feedback in an error-correcting way. They have found it far too easy simply to ban the messengers.

Jon Awbrey

Qualitative metrics do not scale well, while quantitative measurements are just the ticket for a network of tens of thousands of computers working together to index the web.

Google was all about algorithms with "scalability" from the very beginning. It's the number one Power Point for them. Larry and Sergey thought that PageRank fit the bill, and was more academically-oriented than other algorithms. They thought it could resist the sort of manipulation that advertisers, for example, might be tempted to use to boost rankings. This is clear from their initial paper.

Unfortunately, Google's greed turned out to be just as scalable as PageRank. The entire web was overrun with AdWords and then AdSense, and then with scrapers who want to carry AdSense. This was Google's fault because by the time they realized what they had done to the web, the money was rolling in and they were hooked on it. I see Wikipedia's overblown rankings in Google as a feeble attempt to pretend that Google is not all ad-driven. Wikipedia is the only way they can do this these days.

Last week Google launched a major new advertising initiative involving both AdSense and DoubleClick, which Google acquired last year. It's called "behaviorial targeting" by the rest of the world, but Google calls it "interest-based advertising" because that sounds more polite. Read it and weep.

I have no desire to stop people from going to Wikipedia. The best result of criticism is that people would return to Wikipedia and look for confirmation of the criticism. This will not immediately reduce traffic to Wikipedia and in fact might increase it as you suggest. Even when people are able to see that the criticism reflects reality they might increase activity further in efforts to reform or correct the problems identified. Eventually they might stop contributing if they find reform to be futile. Other less involved people exposed to the criticism may stop seeing Wikipedia as a reliable reference and might stop using it or they might just take it with the needed grain of salt.

If the general population thought that Wikipedia was an inspiring success story, then I would think that the number of dedicated editors with Wikipedia accounts would be increasing exponentially. That isn't happening.

A lot of people look at Wikipedia (I know because I often kill time by looking at the traffic numbers for the articles I've written), but aren't inspired to try to improve it. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that the number of dedicated editors is holding steady or declining. It seems that people like using Wikipedia as a quick, introductory reference, but other than that don't think much of it as an information source. In fact, that's what I generally use it for unless the article I look up is clearly well-written, which is usually obvious within a few seconds of skimming the article.

Thought for the Day —