Yes, scholars SHOULD contribute to Wikipedia!

I find myself convinced by Erik Olin Wright's arguments that scholars should actively contribute to Wikipedia. Wright is a sociologist, a productive senior scholar and current President of the American Sociological Association. His views are set out in a clear and concise article in the ASA's newsletter, Footnotes (from November 2011). He has initiated a Wikipedia initiative at the ASA. Here are some quotes from the newsletter article:

"I like to think of Wikipedia as an example of a "real utopia." It embodies ideals of equality, open access, participation, and deliberation in a domination-free environment. It has created a public good available to all."

"Wikipedia has become an important global public good. Since it is a reference source for sociologically relevant ideas and knowledge that is widely used by both the general public and students, it is important that the quality of sociology entries be as high as possible. This will only happen if sociologists themselves contribute to this public good. The basic goal of the new ASA Sociology in Wikipedia Initiative is to make it easier for sociologists to do this. (See the ASA homepage for more information at www.asanet.org.). The heart of the initiative is the creation of a Wikipedia portal connected to the ASA website."

**NOTE: Here is the current link on the ASA website for the "ASA Wikipedia Initiative." I would guess that this is a provisional site that will be improved at some point.

Wright has a great website - many of his publications are available for download, and all sorts of other things. It includes other material related to his Wikipedia initiative, such as a document, "Writing Wikipedia articles as a classroom assignment."

Should scholars edit Wikipedia?

There was an interesting story on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday about a historian (Timothy Messer-Kruse) who tried editing an article in Wikipedia, only to have his changes immediately reversed as soon as he made them. The article concerned the Haymarket affair, when rioters at a labor demonstration in Chicago in 1866 tossed a bomb at police and several people were killed. Evidently Messer-Kruse found some evidence that the standard version of this event, as told in history textbooks, may not be entirely correct. He thinks his attempted revision of the Wikipedia entry was reversed for ideological reasons. The Haymarket affair has been an important part of labor history, and partisans of organized labor apparently did not approve of Messer-Kruse's version of events.

The NPR story mentions an interesting-looking book that I have not seen yet:

Weinberger, David
    2012    Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room. Basic Books, New York.

The story brought mind my own encounter with this kind of ideological editing on Wikipedia, involving the entry for City.  I posted the following comment on the NPR site:

"This story points out the weakness of Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information. I am an archaeologist, an expert on ancient cities, and I used to work on Wikipedia entries within my domain of expertise to improve them and correct errors. But then I ran up against an ideological roadblock. Revered urban planner Jane Jacobs had claimed (against all fact) that early cities preceded agriculture. This is a silly error to an archaeologist, a no-brainer. There is not a single reputable archaeological work that supports Jacobs's view on this small point. But there is a cult of Jane Jacobs, and members believe that anything she said must be true. After having my corrections of this minor empirical error reversed several times by a cult-member, I gave up editing Wikipedia.

But Wikipedia has become a major reference source for millions of people. Should I just turn my back and ignore it because of its obvious scholarly problems? Or should I still try to work to improve it as I can? Is this worth my time? Anything I add to Wikipedia (so long as I avoid cults or ideological topics, I guess) will be read by many many more people than read my scholarly books and articles. As a scholar, I find this difficult territory to negotiate. Thanks for the interesting story."


Also, see my earlier post, where (at the end of the post) I suggest that "wrong information from amateurs is fine for Wikipedia, but not correct information from scholars."

Write us an article, and pay us for the privilege!

The author-pay model is one approach to open access journal publishing. It makes sense and seems to work in the hard sciences, where researchers can put article fees into their research grants. For the social sciences and humanities, where most authors would have to pay the big fees (ca. $1,000 and more), this model is more problematic. But it only makes sense for peer reviewed journal articles, not for other types of publication.

I have just been invited to contribute to a scholarly encyclopedia that advertises itself as "open access," and they want me to pay about $1,000 for the privilege of publishing with them. Normally, scholarly encyclopedias pay authors for the hassle of writing articles that are not peer reviewed and not very valuable (for scholarship or for career building). A typical deal gets the author X amount of dollars (I've seen between $50 and $2,000 for encyclopedia entries), or twice that amount in books published by the press.

This encyclopedia is called "Urban Planning," published by "Intech," a Croatian company. They claim to have an editorial board of experts, but their listing of editorial boards includes fields like biology, engineering, and medicine, nothing in urban studies or social sciences. Their website gives these reasons to publish with them:

• High quality publications
• High impact and visibility
• Worldwide readership
• No copyright transfer
• Efficient publishing process
• Free access to research

Sounds like a scam to me. If I want to write something that is not peer reviewed, and I want it to have wide distribution on the internet, I'll just post it on my website.* I certainly won't pay a Croatian company big bucks to put it in an internet book of possibly dubious quality.

* NOTE -  I did this for once for an "anti-Wikipedia" article. The Wikipedia entry on the Aztecs was quite bad, almost beyond redemption, and the people who worked on it were defensive and hostile to my involvement. So I wrote a summary of Aztec culture and posted it from my home page. Later a Wikipedia editor contacted me and praised my summary. He claimed he was prevented from using it, however, since it did not have an official affiliation or citation! I guess wrong information from amateurs is fine for Wikipedia, but not correct information from scholars.