Publish at May 11 2010 Updated February 01 2024
Rémi Mathis is a library curator and board member of Wikimedia France. He is also an administrator among the contributors to the famous online encyclopedia. He was recently interviewed by Silvère Mercier, who runs the blog Bibliobsession. That's where you'll find this interview, in which Rémi Mathis speaks highly of Wikipedia, encourages libraries to join in and contribute to the Wikisource project (digital library of royalty-free works).
Rémi Mathis is clearly seduced by Wikipedia's mission to popularize information: " Wikipedia is precisely that kind of intelligent popularization that draws on the best sources of information. Founded on the principle of 'neutrality of point of view', the encyclopaedia does not make any claims of its own, but only takes stock of what is known ". This mission is carried out on a daily basis by hundreds of thousands of contributions from Internet users, in accordance with the principle of editorial self-management. Even though there is now a Wikimedia Foundation in various countries, " neither the Foundation nor Wikimedia France has any editorial power, which belongs exclusively to Internet users. Wikipedia is self-managed (hence the many criticisms and fears about its operation), rights are strictly equal and conflicts are settled by the community ". R. Mathis adds, however, that there are indeed administrators, trusted contributors with a proven track record, who can block or delete pages, and destroy inappropriate contributions.
He also stresses the formative aspect of writing articles for Wikipedia: " writing an article for Wikipedia is a complete exercise: defining the subject, searching for information, critiquing sources, choosing relevant resources, organizing knowledge, searching for images, using computer tools, using multilingualism, being able to work in a team and dialogue, etc.".
Except that... It's not quite like that. Only a small minority of contributors take on all these tasks, which tend to be shared between different people. This is a principle strongly encouraged by Wikipedia, which bases the quality of its entries on the multiple revisions they undergo.
But not all articles are entitled to the same treatment, and arbitrary decisions by administrators (such as deleting relevant changes) do exist. This is what Paul Duguid, professor at UC Berkeley's Information Institute, explains in an article originally published in French in Books magazine.
Duguid refutes the idea of "democratic" management at Wikipedia. He points out that certain firms engage in shameless self-promotion, and that politicians edit articles about themselves. He does not say whether these practices are then rectified by the administrators. He himself has had the experience of article modifications being deleted, even though they were relevant, without valid reasons.
More generally, Duguid is skeptical about the " wisdom of crowds ", which almost miraculously leads to the development of the best solutions or products. He recalls Condorcet 's "jury theorem" of 1785, which states that " a group makes better decisions when at least half its members have the necessary knowledge ".
Furthermore, Duguid points out that many one-off contributors are unaware that by changing one sentence, they can disrupt the entire article, or even an entire field in which articles echo and complement each other. So what is Wikipedia's basic unit: the sentence, the paragraph, the article, the domain? In traditional publishing, he says, it's up to the editor to ensure the overall coherence of a section or a work, a role that Wikipedia does not assume.
This does not mean, however, that the American academic rejects everything Wikipedia has to offer. He simply insists that good articles are those that have been written and edited by people who know the subject well... which is not the case with all articles, sometimes barely drafted, and little or not revised if they don't touch on popular subjects.
So, who does what on Wikipedia? That's the question posed by a teacher and a student at the University of Arizona, who have established a typology of contributor profiles, based on a corpus of 1,200 articles of varying quality (Wikipedia has A, B, C levels for hierarchizing article quality). They established seven profiles:
According to the article's two authors, the articles that have benefited most from contributions from "general editors" are the best. Whereas those with a majority of "initiators" and "occasional contributors" are the least good.
This shows that the quality of contributions and collaboration between contributors is at least as important as the number of contributions. It also shows that the people who are able to carry out all the tasks produce the best articles. This is in line with R. Mathis' thinking, but by no means concerns the majority of contributors.
The two researchers from the University of Arizona conclude their article by recommending improvements to Wikipedia's article-editing application. For example, editors should systematically receive an alert to add references and links when they assert something. They should also be periodically invited to revise their own texts. After all, you can't rely on peer review alone to make corrections: it's often difficult, if not impossible, to find the source of a claim that you haven't produced yourself.
Nevertheless, there are many passionate and demanding contributors on Wikipedia. The online daily Slate.fr recently published an interview with one of them. Polmars (pseudonym) is the most active French contributor to Wikipedia, having made 241,920 changes... His comments reflect the seductive appeal of the " utopian and brilliant " project, a slight criticism of the censorious role played by certain administrators (one of whom suppressed his clarification of the date of death of the famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, and finally accepted it two years later, when official sources were available to attest to it), but above all a real passion for this encyclopedia.
This passion led him to create over 600 articles, before devoting himself to other tasks: " For over a year now, I've been writing fewer articles and devoting most of my time to more "obscure" maintenance tasks, such as filing and categorizing articles, "wikification" (placing links to other articles), and various corrections (spelling, style, rectifying errors) - tasks which I feel are just as important as the creation of articles themselves, and which seem to be somewhat neglected by other contributors ". In other words, Polmars is one of Wikipedia's shadow editors, without whom the encyclopedia risks losing its legitimacy and becoming a Spanish inn. Polmars has always turned down offers of honor, refusing to become an administrator.
In the light of these various articles, it is clear that Wikipedia is not the perfect self-managed, democratic organization that many of its users see it to be. That some of its entries are subject to abuse of power. That the quality of contributions and collaboration between contributors is essential, and that the most casual contributors do it a disservice. Editing is a learned skill, requiring a high degree of self-discipline. The group cannot compensate for individual mistakes. But Wikipedia remains irreplaceable, as much for its approach as for its results. As Paul Duguid puts it, "There's no point in trying to demolish Wikipedia (...) if you don't do better than it. And who is, today? Nobody's doing it.
A librarian at Wikipedia Bibliobsession blog, May 11, 2010
Wikipedia, where's your democracy? Books, March-April 2010, full text online
Who Does What on Wikipedia UA News, March 4, 2010, with access to downloadable full-text article
Polmars, 241,920 changes on Wikipedia Slate.fr, April 7, 2010
Image credits: Wikipedia
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