Wikipedia as a Deliberative Community

One of the TED talks that we touched on today was the foundation and values of Wikipedia. I’m sure that the encyclopedia’s policy of promoting neutrality, not “truth” is widespread throughout the world of reference literature. However, I did think it was worth noting that although we may sometimes think of Wikipedia as primarily promoting open source literature, really Wikipedia’s main aim is to be a top notch reference source and it just uses an open source platform as a very effective tool to that end.

Similarly, Wikipedia’s editing community is structured to promote high quality literature. In fact, the idea that the people who edit Wikipedia are in fact, a community, is contrary to many popular held views of Wikipedia edited by the random average individual. As Jimmy Wales shared in the TED talk, only about 18% of editors are anonymous. The editing seems to be quite based on the ideas of both neutrality and community. This is demonstrated through a variety of norms that change and grow as the community and its demands change and grow.

One example of such norms is the delete page, where individuals put up articles they think should be deleted and the community discusses whether to keep or toss the articles. Wikipedia makes a point to have the page be a dialogue, not a vote, with value placed on unique information that can be replicated. Another example is the fact that the community tries to make a point to vote because they view the act of voting as not being neutral. In fact, eliminating the option of a vote (and thus requiring a consensus or at least deliberation with an opinion leader making final decision) could elicit many of the failures of deliberating groups highlighted earlier in the course. (Such possible failures include more biased groups than individuals, groups don’t necessarily arrive at the truth, and groups don’t aggregate info very well.)

It is interesting to me that a wiki, touted by Sunstein as being an alternative to deliberative groups, actually includes deliberative groups in multiple applications. Although wikis are a very interesting alternative to purely deliberative groups, it is important to note that they are not necessarily an entirely different animal.