Mirificam Press

Truth by Consensus: The Wiki Worldview and the Future of Knowledge

August 19th, 2008 in Web Design Worldview

by: Matthew Griffin

Several times in the recent past, I've attempted to workout the Christian worldview of the wiki model. But each time it comes up I find myself quickly overwhelmed by the task. Until now I've abandoned the project in favor more straight-forward design concepts. But a recent conversation made me realize what an important worldview issue the wiki really is. The wiki method of collecting and distributing knowledge has deep implications for the future of social theory and epistemology—implications which haven't even begun to be fully explored by the Christian community.  Should Christians give approval to a collection of knowledge that was essentially voted into truth by the masses? Does the Wiki model break the historical Christian principle that truth and reality are objective? These are some of the questions I will discuss in this article. I'll be using Wikipedia, that behemoth of wikiness, as my primary example.

The World of Wiki

Before we even begin to discuss the ins and outs of the wiki worldview, we must first dive into the history of the wiki and make a clear distinction between the two most popular uses of the wiki system. The word wiki (an abbreviated form of the Hawaiian word wiki wiki meaning "fast") was adopted in the mid-nineties by software developer Ward Cunningham to describe a new piece of collaboration software he was writing. It was originally intended to run on a closed intranet, allowing members of companies and other organizations to build a base of knowledge related to internal procedures and other organization-specific material. It functioned as a kind of internal knowledge repository that all employees could access and edit. This type of wiki raises no huge philosophical questions and Ward Cunningham never intended it to. He saw a need for better communication and collaboration within companies and he built a product to meet the demand. It's was an exciting step forward, but the use of a wiki as a universal repository of knowledge was still years away.

In the early 2000s Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger were introduced to the wiki concept. At the time, both were part of the Nupedia project which was an early attempt at creating a free online encyclopedia. Frustrated by the slow progress of the project, Jimmy and Larry decided to start a wiki to encourage faster article writing. Thus, Wikipedia was born. It was intended to be an offshoot of Nupedia and Wales and Sanger seemed to take the whole idea pretty lightly. In fact, according to the Wikipedia about page Larry Sanger  "came up with the name 'Wikipedia', a silly name for what was at first a very silly project." Of course, the project quickly ballooned into a huge mass of user-contributed knowledge and its mother project, Nupedia, faded into oblivion.

The Philosophy Behind Wikipedia

The whole premise of Wikipedia comes across as extremely postmodern. In theory, it's a world in which truth is decided by the consensus of the masses. And, although Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger are both self-consciously philosophical men (Larry Sanger is an actual professor of philosophy ), it seems as though they had no idea what Wikipedia would come to symbolize. In fact , just a few years after its launch, Larry Sanger quit the project declaring that Wikipedia put "difficult people, trolls, and their enablers" into too much prominence. Larry Sanger has since launched his own peer-reviewed version of Wikipedia called Citizendium. Jimmy Wales who has stayed on with Wikipedia describes himself as an objectivist. The objectivist philosophy places high emphasis on objective reality, rejecting the idea that all truth is relative. In the end, we're left with one of the most visible symbols of postmodernism that seems to have become so by no deliberate action of its creators.

Are You the Key Master?

Is Wikipedia in fact a collection of knowledge built around the notion of subjective truth? The very idea sounds absurd. A collection of truth with the foundation of anti-truth is nothing. One thing is for sure: Wikipedia turns its nose up at a peer-review system that's been in existence in some form or another since the seventeen century. You would think that the pervasively postmodern academia would welcome an idea like Wikipedia with open arms. But apparently the men and women in the ivory towers have a little trouble practicing what they preach (or teach). It turns out that the gatekeepers of knowledge aren't so willing to share the responsibility. And that's what it really comes down to—who should control the flow of information to the public? Who decides what's worth publishing? The internet as a whole has turned the world of gatekeepers upside down. Wikipedia just happens to be the largest and most intrusive example.

Approaching the issue of gatekeepers is a difficult and precarious task. On the one hand the initial reaction of Christian writers and thinkers may be to cheer on the revolution.  It's about time Christian ideas were allowed back into the cultural marketplace. And an unseating of the gatekeepers is a quick route to accomplishing just that. On the other hand, by approving the wiki model, are Christians winning a battle but losing the war? This subject demands careful consideration. In his 2000 book Christians in a .com World, Gene Edward Veith Jr. had this to say about the issue:

The end of the gatekeepers opens up possibilities for Christian thinkers to become players again. But it is still necessary to go through the gates.

I found Veith's perspective to be incredibly balanced and thoroughly Christian. Even though at the time of the book's writing Wikipedia had yet to be born, Veith saw through to the heart of the issues facing the Christian self-publisher. There is a balance that Christians should model in the face of the knowledge revolution. We can welcome the openness of the new system while remaining wary of the potential pitfalls and continuing to hold self-publishers accountable to truth. We'll look into this topic with greater detail a little later on.

The Pragmatist's Test: Is it Working?

It's easy to criticize Wikipedia—calling it unreliable postmodern ephemera. But critics are left with a glaring hole in their attack: Wikipedia seems to be working. Aside from a few harmless pranks, studies have found Wikipedia to be exceptionally reliable. Wikipedia's own about page has this to say about the subject:

Studies suggest that Wikipedia is broadly as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica, with similar error rates on established articles for both major and minor omissions and errors. There is a tentative consensus, backed by a gradual increase in academic citation as a source, that it provides a good starting point for research, and that articles in general have proven to be reasonably sound.

This is especially true for its most prominent and often searched articles. With references and cross-references encouraged and no possible overarching bias on the project as a whole, it's difficult to stage a farce on Wikipedia (at least one that remains live for any length of time).This is something that can't be said for many peer-reviewed publications where one individual or a small group of individual may carefully include or omit key information in order to spin a tale. In many cases truth shines even brighter on Wikipedia than its peer-reviewed brothers. In a brief experiment of my own, I found that Wikipedia at least mentions the controversy surrounding both Haekel's Embryo drawings and the peppered moths of England. Both have been cited unchecked in peer-reviewed textbooks for decades as biological proof of Darwin's theory of evolution. Larry Sanger's Citizendium mentions no controversy in the case of the peppered moths and doesn't even have an article about Ernst Haekel.

Another strength of Wikipedia is shorter publishing times. What used to take years now takes days, ensuring that the latest information is available on important experiments and discoveries.This is not to say that Wikipedia is right just because it's working. The Christian worldview is not purely pragmatic. Many ideas have worked in the short-term only to crumble over time because they failed to conform to God's truth. But with so much momentum on Wikipedia's side, critics (especially Christians) should be ready with some kind of alternative. Returning to the original peer-review system is completely out of the question at this point. The birth of the internet was the end of the ivory tower gatekeepers. Like it or not that ship has sailed. For sure, there will continue to be journals and magazines that carry greater clout, but never again will all ideas be screened before the world sees them. Larry Sanger may be onto something with his Citizendium, but with a puny 7,700 English articles (as of August 2008) compared to Wikipedia's 2.5 million, the odds are stacked against him. And he seems to have the same bias problems that plagued the old peer-review system.

Beyond the Symbol: The Real Wikipedia

The objections to Wikipedia's wiki model center primarily around the accusation that by nature it has a relativistic view of truth. In theory, it levels the intellectual playing field, giving Joe Plumber's ideas about Kierkegaard's existentialism the same authority as a noted philosopher. Who could ask for a more magnificent icon of postmodernism? But there is a question that this surface-level glance at Wikipedia takes for granted: Just because Joe Plumber can edit an article about Soren Kierkegaard, does that mean he will or that he even wants to? Maybe he would rather edit an article about cutting pipes or not edit any articles at all. I think after reading the article about Soren Kierkegaard on Wikipedia you will agree that Joe Plumber did not write it. So who did? Obviously an expert on the subject, anonymous as he or she may be. What seems on the surface to be a democratic truth vote is actually functioning a little more like a republic under the surface. Experts are writing articles in their areas of expertise; and the public, including other experts, are there to reference, cross-reference, and call out the experts when they're trying to shove something down the public's throat.

So what would it take for Wikipedia to truly enforce a relativistic view of truth? I believe it would have to require that every visitor to every article make an intellectual contribution regardless of his or her knowledge of the subject. Only then would the process truly reflect the postmodern worldview. Fortunately, that's not how it's going down. Still, it's important to remember that Wikipedia's somewhat unstable model does has the potential to produce false information. To balance the scale, Wikipedia should only be a starting point for any serious research rather than the end-all reasearch tool. The depth of its references and cross-references is possibly its greatest strength.

Truth by Consensus

Consensus has always been an important part of the Christian's search for God's truth. It is a tool that God has designed as part of our sanctification. "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise..." (Proverb 13:20) That's not to say that human consensus makes a proposition true. All truth is God's truth and it stands alone—in no need of our confirmation. God has, however, made us relational just as he is relational. A man left to himself, cut off from diverse human intellectual stimuli and the steadying grace of God, will create outrageous truths for himself. The peer-review system of the past was probably the best possible solution given the circumstances under which it was conceived. It provided a system of checks and balances that is always needed in our search for truth. But as of late, it has turned into a cruelly exclusive, anti-god machine. It forces all would-be members to undergo years of rigorous atheistic programming throughout primary and secondary education. If you happen to make it through unscathed, you will be denied entrance when you fail the worldview test at the end. This warped version of consensus ceases to be beneficial to the truth.

It's true that the internet in general has opened the publishing door to all kinds of people who have no business publishing. But we forget sometimes that it has also opened the doors to all kinds of fact-checkers and whistle-blowers that had no voice before. Will this be enough to make Wikipedia be successful in the long-run? That remains to be seen. But as it stands and functions now, Wikipedia is nothing for Christians to be afraid of. Rather, we should be participating in and enhancing it for the glory of God. The alternative is letting godless men and women shape the knowledge base to which the world increasingly turns for answers.

This has been a longer article than usual so I congratulate you if you've made it to the end. I strongly recommend reading Gene Edward Veith's Christians in a .com World if you are interested in studying the topic of self-publishing in greater detail.

Post Your Comment

Comments are closed.