Conceptions and Misconceptions Academics Hold About Wikipedia

This is a paper I presented at Wikimania 2008, the international conference of those involved with or interested in Wikipedia, Wiktonary, Wikibooks, or any other wiki under the Wikimedia Foundation umbrella. This presentation was about the relationship between Wikipedia and Academia.

Abstract: As an ethnographer, I enter into communities, learn their customs, beliefs, and practices, then report back to the academy to share what I have discovered. In this presentation, I wish to do the opposite, presenting to the Wikipedian community an ethnography of academics as they relate to Wikipedia. I believe I can give such an account without violating the trust other academics have placed in me while casually conversing, although it requires me to rely more on academic publications, publicly-available academic mailing lists, academic blogs, and the School and University Projects section on Wikipedia.

While the myth that Wikipedia is written by experts and is unchangeable by the public has generally (but not uniformly) been dispelled, many in academia still fundamentally misunderstand Wikipedia itself, the Wikipedian community, and the Wikimedia Foundation. Far from benign, these are based on something more than a simple ignorance of Wikipedia, the Wiki community and the Wikimedia Foundation. Contrary to my initial reaction, the biggest misconception was not an ignorance of a specific feature or element of the project, like the permanent link or editorial standards. It is the belief that Wikipedia is intended to be an absolutely authoritative, completely reliable, and perfectly citable source.  This is not a belief held by the Wikipedia community.  This misconception gives rise to a narrative which claims that the defining line between pro-Wikipedia academics and anti-Wikipedia academics is based in the decision to accept Wikipedia as a reliable, authoritative source.  This is not the case; in fact, there are a growing number of academics who do not believe in citing Wikipedia authoritatively, but contribute to the project and integrate it in their research or teaching. I also comment on the conceptions of pro-Wikipedia academics, who have linked Wikipedia to various theoretical or ideological movements.

This presentation is multi-licensed under the GNU FDL 2.0 or later, the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0, as well as the default license for this site.

https://stuartgeiger.com/assets/wikimania-geiger-conceptions.ppt (Powerpoint, 286kb)