Electric Universe as Wikipedia Failure Case Study

[psi]

Friends and colleagues --

below is copied an abstract for a lecture about Wikipedia submitted for the Coppin State University Technology Conference. Please note the highlighted portion concerning paradigm shifts in general and Electric Universe theory in particular. I would appreciate the assistance of persons with knowledge of the history of Wikipedia censorship of Electric Universe theory to post their accounts of what happened -- including as much detail of dates (and even if available the avatars of particular editors and contributors on both sides of the debate) and what was done as possible. The abstract has not yet been accepted but I expect it to be.

Thanks.

psi

You might also be interested to know that a colleague of mine who has a Masters degree in astrophysics and is a professional writer on science and other topics, who when I first raised EU theory with him several years ago was quite skeptical, recently volunteered more or less out of the blue that he was now virtually convinced of at least some major elements of EU theory. And this is a guy who was very well trained at the Masters level on "Dark Matter," "Black holes," and all the rest of contemporary evasive metaphysics now fig-leafing the emperor of conventional dogma.




To Wiki, or Not to Wiki?
A Question for the 21st Century Academy





Abstract

In recent years the subject of how academicians and students should respond to the prevalence and popularity of the unconventional new information resource known as Wikipedia has attracted considerable media attention, with significant numbers of librarians and academicians asserting, often without much firsthand knowledge, the unreliability of the new media. This seminar will introduce the theoretical and practical implication of internet social media, with a focus on Wikipedia as a technology for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. From a historical perspective, the present antipathy towards Wikipedia will turn out to be a relatively short-lived phenomenon, having more to do with changing models of how knowledge is or should be generated and propagated than with the intrinsic limitations of the new media. In the traditional view, knowledge is generated by experts (such as academicians), who dispense their knowledge through a formal educational process or contribute to reference articles in such well-established and respected venues as Encyclopedia Britannica. While it would be a mistake to underestimate the role of intellectuals and academicians as contributors to the production of knowledge, it will be argued that this model is in significant part a social relationship contingent on the “means of the media,” and not an ahistorical necessity inscribed in stone.

Whatever its flaws – and these will be considered – Wikipedia has proven remarkably successful by almost any applicable metric. As of February 2011, it has generated 3,552,000 English articles, over a million each in German and French, and many millions more in other languages. There are currently over 140,000 articles and 350,000 registered users on the Wikipedia Arabica, which only started in July 2003. According to current world total estimates, Wikipedia contains 9.25 million articles in approximately 250 languages. Compare this to the total found in the 2002 print version of Encyclopedia Britannica: 65,000. In other words, the English language Wikipedia is already 54 times the size of Encyclopedia Britannica. Moreover, in 2008—the latest years for which statistics are readily available – the English Wikipedia was adding articles at the rate of about 1,000 per day, or more than 1/3 of a million per year.

In February 2007, Comscore, an organization that keeps track of online statistics, listed Wikipedia as the 8th most visited site on the web. All of the other top ten were commercial sites.

• Time Warner Network: 117 million
• Microsoft Sites: 115 million
• Google Sites: 113 million
• eBay: 81 million
• Fox Interactive Media: 75 million
• Amazon Sites: 51 million
• Ask Network: 49 million
• Wikipedia Sites: 43 million
• New York Times Digital: 40 million

By 2011, Wikipedia had become the 5th most visited site on the web, with over 440 million unique visitors a month – ten times the number of four years ago.

These statistics are all from Wikipedia or other online sources. It would be impossible to find them in Britannica or any other print resource. The relatively slow pace of print publications and their cumbersome methods for updating or correcting information mean that by the time they are in print, their contents – insofar as they relate to contemporary historical or cultural events such as the growth of Wikipedia – will be obsolete.

How does Wikipedia do this? In its audited 2006 financial statement, Wikipedia’s parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, listed its assets in US dollars as follows: 2004: 56,666; 2005: 283,487; 2006: 1,066,785. The Foundation’s Operating expenditures during those three years were 23,463 177,670 791,907. By 2009 the Foundation’s assets were valued at over 8,000,000, and its annual budget had grown to around 5,600,000. While those numbers show a steady and healthy growth that would be the envy of any entrepreneur, they are a pittance to spend for what Wikipedia – which incidentally earns no money through ad sales – has produced.

It is obvious that money, long regarded as the engine of economic activity in every known human society, is not the cause of Wikipedia’s growth in “market” share. In fact, Wikipedia’s success defies the classical law of economics by which work is performed primarily in exchange for financial remuneration. The Foundation’s miniscule paid staff perform only a tiny amount of the work required to produce Wikipedia; almost all is done, on the contrary, by unpaid volunteers, some of whom literally devote many hours a week to the community service of producing and refining Wikipedia’s knowledge base.

As is well known, Wikipedia notoriously allows anyone to edit an article. This is widely regarded by the traditional organs of knowledge – including the vast majority of opinion in institutions of higher learning – as Wikipedia’s “Achilles heel.” How can we possibly trust an encyclopedia resource that is not written and certified exclusively by experts?

In fact, we will see how the principle of free access paradoxically allows Wikipedia to draw on a wide range of expertise, both traditional and previously voiceless, to create and edit new articles, and to function swiftly and efficiently to correct definite errors or address shortcomings. This remains true, I will however argue, only so long as the entries involve conventional domains of knowledge that do not invoke a large quotient of subjectivity or invite highly charged emotional debates – such as when, for example, paradigms are shifting. Wikipedia is no more successful at negotiating these trouble spots, and sometimes is markedly less so, than more traditional reference works. In part this is because Wikipedia is subject in such instances to manipulation by a relatively small number of highly motivated partisans, usually dedicated – ironically – to “preserving” Wikipedia’s image by suppressing variant accounts of relevancy and factuality and adhering to conservative dogma, for fear of being perceived as too much “beyond the fringe” of respectable thought. This kind of “hypercorrection” has greatly impeded Wikipedia’s ability to convey the subtleties of intellectual discourse and the dynamics of change in several major areas of interest. Time permitting, the case studies of “electric universe” theory and the “Shakespearean authorship question” will be reviewed.

Participants in the seminar will discuss the history of Wikipedia, its significance for traditional theories of knowledge, and its strengths and limitations as a knowledge venue. A behind-the-scenes tour of such Wikipedia features including History, Discussion, and Dispute Resolution will expose participants to some practical and social dimensions of the new media. The workshop will engage in collaborative editing of several Wikipedia pages.

The proposer has “seeded” 19 Wikipedia pages and made significant, content-oriented edits to 25 more.


Figure One: Growth of English Wikipedia Articles is Exponential.