This lecture is part of a t course on social media at the University of Winchester. It examines wikipedia and the idea of knowledge management. It looks at the underlying rationality of collaborative knowledge creation and some of the critical issues such as whether crowds are better than experts and what kinds of knoiwledge management wikipedia is actually good for.

1. Lecture 6 Wikis and knowledge
management

2. Introduction
 Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia.
 The entries are compiled by users anyone can edit
wikipedia.
 Consequently it tends to be a site with lots of debate
going on in the preparation of the articles.
 A number of authors contend that as well as being a
platform on which debate occurs, Wikipedia is a cause of
debate.
 Wikipedia has caused a lot of controversy and debate.
 There is a distinct discourse about Wikipedia with defined
sides.
 In this lecture we will:
 Look at what wikipedia is supposed to be;
 Look at the underlying logic/philosophy;
 Look at the challenge and critique of this;

3. What wikipedia is…
 Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry
Sanger.
 Currently (24/2/14) 4,459,245 articles.
 Created / edited by 20,802,380 Wikipedians.
 World’s 6th most visited website.
 Probably best example of ‘crowdsourcing’:
something made for users by users.
 Funded by donation – handled by Wikimedia.
 Builds on a software model called ‘open source’
where people can improve on computer code them
selves – opposite to proprietary software where
people hide their innovation.

4. What it is supposed to be…
 “Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia: It combines
many features of general and specialized
encyclopaedias, almanacs, and gazetteers.
Wikipedia is not a soapbox, an advertising
platform, a vanity press, an experiment in
anarchy or democracy, an indiscriminate
collection of information, or a web directory. It
is not a dictionary, a newspaper, or a collection
of source documents, although some of its
fellow Wikimedia projects are.”
 Based on 5 principles (of which the above is
the first)

5. 5 Principles
 Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia;
 Wikipedia is written from a neutral point
of view;
 Wikipedia is free content that anyone
can edit, use, modify, and distribute;
 Editors should treat each other with
respect and civility;
 Wikipedia does not have firm rules.

6. The idea of wikipedia
 Aside of the principles, as a piece of
media Wikipedia can be said to be the
application of web 2.0 to the issue of
knowledge management.
 Knowledge management relates to a
number of questions about information
in the contemporary world.

7. Questions of our age:
Where does knowledge come
from?
 Issues of knowledge
 Who are the holders of knowledge?
 Who guards it, preserves it and edits it?
 Where do we go to find out information?
 Who can we trust?
 These are fundamentally questions of
knowledge management.
 In traditional society it was the ‘priestly’ class.
 In modernity it was the ‘expert’ class.
 In post modern times we have a new
candidate.

8. What’s best, an expert or a
crowd?
 Wikipedia is based upon a fundamental
assertion that sometimes a crowd of non-
experts is better than a small number of
experts.
 However historical arrangements for the
management of knowledge argue the
opposite, that an expert is better than a
crowd.
 A few exceptions – democratic politics (even
then experts employed to advise), popular
taste (made by experts though).
 How did we get here?

9. History of western thought
 European intellectual life went through a
big transition in the C18th / C19th
century.
 The Enlightenment.
 The establishment of science, emphasis
on reason (rather than trust in tradition),
development of scientific method for
knowing about the world.
 A quest for knowledge.

10. Application of method
 Knowledge comes about though the
application of a method.
 This is best done by an expert, someone
trained to do it.
 Normal people cannot follow the rigours
of doing this so we have experts to do
it.
 Like academics and scientists.

11. The democratic challenge
 Wikipedia is (was) part of a movement that
challenged the legitimacy of the expert.
 The argument is that collectively people
are clever.
 While we may be stupid individually, when
we collectivise we are more clever than the
sum of the parts.
 As a society stupid people are more than
compensated for by clever people.
 ?

12. Francis Galton
 Darwin’s half cousin.
 Discovered/invented many
advances in science
(statistics, finger prints).
 Tried to apply Darwin’s
theories to humans.
 Elitist – believed in breeding
an elite class, not agreeable
to democracy.
 A eugenicist (hierarchy of
the human races and social
classes).

13. Frankie goes to market…
 In 1906 he went to the “West of England Fat Stock
and Poultry Exhibition” in Plymouth.
 He came across a “Guess the weight of an Ox”
competition.
 About 800 entries.
 He proposed that “The average competitor was
probably as well fitted for making a just estimate of
the… weight of the ox, as an average voter is of
judging the merits of most political issues”.
 IE not very, and they would be wrong (and
accordingly so would their vote be for the wrong
person).

14. Test
 To test his theory he collected
all the tickets at the end and
calculated the average.
 There were 787 tickets
(excluding ones he could not
read).
 He added them together and
calculated the Median and
(arithmetic) Mean Estimated
weight.
 The Median was 1207 pounds.
 The Mean was 1197 pounds.
 He then checked the weight of
the ox.

15. Oh.
 It weighed 1198 pounds.
 The average guess was one
pound off – less than 0.1%
wrong.
 How?
 Individually the guesses were
very mixed but collectively they
were virtually exactly right.
 The good cancelled out the bad
and as there were more good
guesses than bad the result is
nearly correct.
 The good ‘steers’ the result (did
you see what I did there? the
pun? ‘steers’?? – I am wasted
as a lecturer, wasted).

16. Metaphor
 It is a good metaphor but the story is not
completely appropriate to wikipedia
because that was an ‘undirected crowd’.
 Wikipedia is a directed, ordered crowd.
 Many people trying to contribute to
knowledge incrementally.
 Even better than just guessing, they are
working to a set of principles to provide the
best knowledge available.
 They seek to continually refine the
knowledge.

17. The wisdom of crowds and
others
 During 2000s lots of
optimistic books and
articles published
about the power of
crowds and why
collaboration is a
great thing.
 Moreover,
collaborative activity is
popular in many
areas.

18. The big idea
 Within these texts is the idea that by using the
connective power of social media we can work on
collaborative projects.
 In doing so we will ‘open up’ knowledge so that
anyone who is interested can contribute and engage.
 There will be lots of arguments.
 So we need structures to make this civil.
 But these arguments will lead to better knowledge as
rationality will win out – echoes of Habermas.
 This will be better knowledge than that of self
appointed experts.

19. Institutionalisation
 Since its founding Wikipedia has
developed quite rigorous systems and is
now firmly institutionalised (not
monetized though).
 Now control processes – human and
computer – that filter out malicious and
problematic comment.
 No longer a popularity contest but a
‘staged’ model of contribution.

20. Criticism
 The optimism was met by a lot of
negative criticism of Wikipedia and
collaboration.
 This negative approach has three
main points:
 Credibility is derived from expertise;
 Experts are good;
 Be warned of the ‘hive mind’;

21. Credibility is derived from expertise
 Academic knowledge is accepted as
being of higher value than other
forms of knowledge as it is produced
by experts who follow a process,
understand that process and will be
able to discern when that process is
not followed – hence peer review.
 Contrarily, democratic / wiki
knowledge is legitimated not by
expertise but by verisimilitude or by
popular acceptance.
 Citizen journalism = good!
 Citizen dentistry = hold on a
minute…

22. Experts are good as they make
new knowledge
 Wikipedia disseminates existing knowledge, it
rearticulates and redrafts previously published
material.
 It is an echo chamber – it ‘churns’.
 But it does not engage in the production of
knowledge or research that is valid.
 It does not raise the standard of knowledge -how
much we know of a topic.
 Just changes where that knowledge is stored.
 This might be good but it might also damage / pollute
the process of knowledge production.
 It becomes harder to see the good for the bad when
so many are making it.

23. Be warned of the ‘hive mind’ and
the sleep of reason
 Western scholarship has a strong
tradition of individualism – learning to
be an expert and then having a
reputation and therefore
accountability.
 Collaborative knowledge is about
disappearing into knowledge – of no
one having responsibility for
knowledge and of all being party to a
position with no-one accountable for
that position.
 Problems of group think smothering
individual challenge and creativity –
what some call Digital Maoism – all
agreeing to the popular position.
Francisco Goya El Sueño de la
Razón Produce Monstruos (The
Sleep of Reason Produces
Monsters, 1797)

24. Conclusion
 A combative field.
 Some argue that it that the debate is not
just about Wikipedia but about the wider
issue of changes in social life of late
modernity.
 The old guard resisting the new.
 Others say it is actually about conflating
technology for practice – you need good
knowledge on new technology just as it
was needed in books – good online
material still needs all the processes of old.