THING 8 -- Wikis

When someone says the word wiki, the first thing to come to mind, of course, is Wikipedia...or that Wiccan girl I knew in high school, but that's just me. I know there are many other wikis out there -- Ruth even found me my favorite, the Muppet Wiki, last year -- but Wikipedia is still the number one because it just about encompasses everything. I like the idea of specialized wikis and enjoyed reading and contributing to the 10Things wiki.

Still, I have kind of a love/hate relationship with Wikipedia and the ideas of wikis. I love them for random stuff, like learning about the origins of technology or the history of a soap opera character, but if I really want cut-and-dry facts, I'll consult a book (or Library database) first. The hate side really comes out when students come to the Library and tell me that their teachers recommend Wikipedia as a legitimate source for their research...URGH!! Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia has a lot of great factual information, but since it is more of a communal effort, I can't trust it as much. I think this distrust also has to do with the fact that I still work in the publishing world, something I will discuss further in a minute.

So, yeah, I can't trust Wikipedia as a source, does this mean I suffer from Radical Distrust? Maybe. I get the idea of Radical Trust and even sort of embrace it as a theory, but it is something I think we always have to be leery of. Yes there are safeguards, yes there are loopholes, but we always have to take everything bit by bit and piece by piece. Just because there are safeguards, we should never let our own guard down. We don't always know WHO is providing us with our information. Would you take a backdive trust fall into the arms of just anyone? I didn't think so.

Before I worked full-time in libraries, I worked full-time in the publishing world. I still work in the field quite actively as a freelance editor and writer for some educational publishers and healthcare organizations. Editors take facts and fact-checking VERY seriously. I know smart/talented people who have been let go from jobs for making just one factual error. Many journalists and writers also have valid fears that the concept of "Internet publishing" will diminish the hard work they do. I realize that each year, many books are published with factual errors. What you may not realize is how just about every nonfiction book is initially written with errors. It is the tedious collaborative effort between the author and the editorial staff that makes a book a worthy reference. There are multiple checks and balances. Sadly, sometimes so much time is spent on making sure a book is accurate that it becomes inaccurately out-of-date by the time it is printed (that is one draw of the Internet, being that its resources become "living" and "evolving" documents). Within the last few years, I have begun editing textbooks and I cannot begin to express the initial fear and paranoia I had. I still have nightmares that the multiple choice questions in the teacher's editions don't correlate with the text. Publishing is a precise and fastidious science. I sometimes feel that wikis diminish the value of a good hardbound reference.