Wikigroaning
Posted by: Ellie on: May 26, 2009
Apologies again for the late post – I had radio journalism prac and life get way too much for most of last week. Excuses excuses, here is my fabulous blog post on Wikipedia…
You have been cordially invited to witness the matrimonial union of…
DESPERATE UNI STUDENT
and
WIKIPEDIA
Please join these two lovers in celebrating their marriage at:
Your Computer, midnight.
Caffeinated drinks will be served.
Dress: Pyjamas.
- taken from my Livejournal, circa June 2006
As soon as Wikipedia wormed its way into the consciousness of school and university students alike, so too did criticism.
Website evaluation suddenly became part of the school curriculum, with the firm principle of “Use Wikipedia for general background information and by all means, use their source list. But don’t cite from it.”
Quite simply, the open-source nature of Wikipedia is not a sure-fire guarantee that every contribution is accurate or credible, so it would be unwise to treat Wikipedia as an academic work.
Technology writer for The Guardian Simon Waldman says Wikipedia seems like “anarchy”.
Encyclopedia Brittanica’s editor-in-chief Dale Hoiberg criticises Wikipedia for not giving emphasis to “important” topics.
“People write on things they’re interested in, and so many subjects don’t get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair.”
I personally like this about Wikipedia. For example, my favourite video game is Final Fantasy VI. The extensive entry in Wikipedia has obviously been put together by die-hard fans. The extensive plot and long cast of characters is written in great detail.
In comparison to Encyclopedia Britanica, academic writers are not likely to be interested in old-school RPG video games and dismiss it as irrelevant – despite the fact that there are many fans out there who are interested in the topic.
I would show you an example but apparently you have to pay to use Encyclopedia Britanica! What a rip off. I can access Wikipedia for free, you know.
I’ll look at Citizendium instead, who is trying to be the anti-Wikipedia: “Our growing number of editor-approved articles are reliable and of world class quality, rivaling the best printed encyclopedias.” Instead of random Internet users under a cyber-pseudonym, Citizendium claims that their articles are written by experts under their real names.
But upon searching, there is no such article for Final Fantasy VI. I did, however, find a general article for Final Fantasy. It lists the barest minimal knowledge of the game – that all the games have airships, a character named Cid and fictional animals chocobos and moogles. A series with over thirteen storyline-rich games with characters and their backstories, hundreds of towns, battle abilities, bosses and monsters, and that’s all they have to say? There are only two separate articles for individual games – the two most popular of the series, FFVII and FFX. Both of which, again, are very short despite the many complexities in the game.
There is no such thing as being an “expert” on video games. You can’t get a Bachelor of Video Games. In the video gaming community, the nerdiest nerd who has spent hours playing over a video game and noting the details has more authoritative knowledge than, say a professor who has studied video games from an academic point of view. But obviously video games and merely being a fan who knows them very well isn’t good enough for Citizendium.
So if I want to know about the extensive backstories of the Final Fantasy VI characters, I guess Wikipedia is the place to go.
This tendency for Wikipedia to place emphasis on human interest rather than what academics think we should be interested in has led to a game invented by users at satirical entertainment website SomethingAwful: Wikigroaning.
Quite simply, Wikigroaning is comparing the length of an article about serious topic with another similar, but “frivolous” topic.
If the “frivolous” topic’s article is longer, we have a Wikigroan.
There are many examples on the site you can have a look at.
Today’s featured article on Wikipedia is on Irish rock band U2. The article has almost 10,000 words (9,772 to be exact).
A more academic topic – Celtic music – is only a meagre 1,695 words…
Ladies and gents, we have a Wikigroan.
2 Responses to "Wikigroaning"
June 4, 2009 at 1:42 am
Your comments on the video game industry and how the dedication of the fans rolls over to Wikipedia is the perfect example for anyone who puts forward lack of education as a show-stopper when it comes to credibility. I’ve made mention of niches in my own Wikipedia entry, and find it fascinating that people can know so much about x interest or y favourite movie/band/game. Those people really deserve the right to contribute, and I’ve experienced with gaming in particular that misinformation won’t last very long in a die-hard community like gaming that prides itself largely on accuracy and knowledge, story and history. You don’t need to a master’s on the subject or to have studied animation or design to appreciate things like that the way that they were meant to be. Really, it’s about self created experts dealing with their guilty pleasure, backed up by other self created experts who have experienced that same ‘fandamonium’. Encyclopaedia’s can no longer remain the standard because their scope is so much smaller than Wikipedia’s. Wiki breaks new ground that encyclopaedia’s never dreamt of covering, and who better to become the new age experts on this new territory than fans themselves? None better!
May 26, 2009 at 7:22 am
Thanks for the interesting post. The quote from Encyclopedia Britannica’s editor in chief Dale Hoiberg basically reflects what I think is wrong with using “traditional” sources of information. He criticises Wikipedia for having not enough historical and “important” topics but when I have to write about assignment topics that are about anything newer than about 2000 the only place that gives you relevant, easy to read, basic information is Wikipedia. Also I disagree that Wikipedia should not be used as an academic source, it more depends on the subject. For example it is best not to use it when you need accurate dates, measurements etc but to explain a theory or event it is a great source. Due to the way Wikipedia is administered and organised, some information is often extremely accurate, especially relating to new media topics and current issues. Wikipedia states in it’s rules of use that information must be from a neutral point of view so I think that you often get a more accurate account of an event than if you were to read something published in a newspaper, journal article or even encyclopedia (where information is often published from the point of view of the writer/s). However, the main advantage of Wikipedia is that it is able to constantly evolve and change – therefore topics and subjects have no fixed answers or meanings. Therefore, you know when you are using it that you are getting up to date information.