I have recently been noticing some vicious critiques of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. A recent New Yorker article (“Know it All: Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise?“), for example, discusses the pros and cons of Wikipedia. The article highlights some praise (even from a famous philosopher, Hilary Putnam), but also highlights some criticisms of the encyclopedia.

Now, I just wanted to post some thoughts here about Wikipedia, primarily what I take to be misunderstandings about it. There certainly are obvious downsides to Wikipedia (edit wars, non-experts posting their philosophy of life, vandalism, and so forth). But, while I hate it all too, I also don’t consider Wikipedia to be striving for high quality. I think Wikipedia is primarily about having (at minimum) decent information about lots of topics. To put it shortly: quantity over quality.

Accepting quantity over quality for Wikipedia is the best outlook for several reasons. First, this seems like a more reasonable goal, given the format of Wikipedia (i.e., anyone can edit). Second, this is all I use Wikipedia for, and it’s worked out pretty well. I like to go to Wikipedia when I’ve heard about something, but I don’t know much about it. I tend to go looking for pop culture stuff, news, etc. (things I’m no expert on). Then, I look it up and get some introductory information on it, realizing that many of the details are probably flawed. So, I got an account on Wikipedia to contribute to ”that” project. I wanted to do my part in contributing to something I know quite a bit about: philosophy. That way, when some freshman college student, for example, comes looking for, say, “epiphenomenalism”, because they heard about it in some class but didn’t know what it meant, they can get some intro-level information for free.

So, I think Wikipedia is about the spread of free medium quality information. Now, of course, it’s great to get high-quality information there; and they have a system of getting “feature article” status that strives for that. But, that seems to be icing on the cake. That’s why I tend to stay away from high-traffic articles like “consciousness”, and focus on upgrading articles from low quality to medium-quality. If you spend your time trying to make medium quality articles high quality, you will be involved in some crazy, nitpicky edit wars. Now, that’s not to say that the consciousness entry and other similar ones should be ignored. They should be (and largely are) watched carefully, and corrected when necessary.

What I’m trying to say is that a lot of people have too high of standards for Wikipedia. Consequently, they launch polemics against it and declair it a failure. But, this is a mistake. Lower your standards, embrace the vast amount of medium quality information, and you will be much happier with Wikipedia.

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