Pulling Wikipedia’s Plug, cont’d.

Last week’s entry about Wikipedia–titled with characteristic subtlety “Wikipedia: Time to Pull the Plug“– resulted in the expected crapspatter in wikiville. But since nobody has created a fake Wikipedia bio of me featuring a photo of Curly Howard, I think I’ve emerged largely unharmed.

But I wanted to call attention to a reader comment which makes an excellent point my item did not–that, while both discussion forums and wikis are both 2.0 media types that give users a voice, they are very different products that produce very different types of information. Forums assemble individual voices on a topic. Wikipedia assembles collective knowledge from a group. Point taken.

The comment, from a guy named Greg, makes another point about the limits of the Wikipedia project. I think it’s a useful extention about the nature, and future, of Wikipedia.

So: At the risk of going so media-meta that I disappear into the back side of a Mobius strip, I print the comment, and my response to it, below.

The comment from Greg

I am something of a wikipedia apologist, but I think you are missing a key difference between the goals of wikipedia and support forums (if not the success of said goals). Wikipedia tries to be a generic and unbaised report on a topic backed up with citations from more credible sources. Whereas in a forum, an individual is forced to figure out which “opinion” is best for him or her to use. Yes a forum may have citations from more credible sources, but there is no guidelines or ideology to encourage it. So, two different beasts, no one inherently better than the other.

Of course wikipedia isn’t the the best place for any research past scratching the surface, there is no doubt of that. It’s a starting point at best, and everyone would do well to remember it. One should be checking the citations for detail. But alas, the ideas of primary, secondary, and tertiary research are being lost. You can certainly lay a bit of blame at wikipedia’s feet by not being more clear in its mission, but there are other forces at play as well.

One other thing wikipedia is not is a resource for, and that’s finding other websites related to a topic. The goal as I understand it is to facilitate finding other supposedly more credible and pointed bits of information. To find whole sites… that’s google’s job.–Greg

My response

Thanks much for your good comment. You’re absolutely right that forums and wikis (including Wikipedia) are two very different beasts roaming the odd landscape of 2.0land. We should not expect the same–or even more than a slice of “reality,” whatever that means–from both media types.

Your points about the limitations of Wikipedia–that it’s not great for researching beyond the surface, that it’s at best a starting point, that one should check citations etc.–are good to hear.

I will have to go back and look (in Wikipedia, maybe. Ahem) and compare this to what I recall to be the original claims and intent for the project. I recall an article, I believe in Wired, featuring Mssr. Wales, who spoke in quite utopian terms about the power and magnitude of the project and its vast potential for creating a well informed citizenry. Certainly I’ve read that since, and hear versions of it from folks who participate earnestly in the project. I don’t often hear the caveats you speak of very often from people who support the project.

All of which leads to a question that has been dogging me: whether it’s simply a case that (like any good 2.0 project) once turned over to creators and the audience, Wikipedia has become far different from what anybody anticipated.

For worse or better (I argue the former, others will argue that latter) Wikipedia commands center stage of the encyclopedic information universe right now. I’m beginning to wonder whether, given the flaws I mentioned in my piece and you cite in your comment, whether a big, visible disclaimer should appear on page one, or at the top of every entry. There is an acknowledgment of its limitations on various “about” pages, but I’m guessing Wikipedia’s metrics show that a tiny proportion of users spend much time with those pages.

A clearer statement of limits and approptiate uses would be a public service. It would enhance transparency. I hope these are principles to which the contributors to Wikipedia remain committed.–Craig Stoltz

Twing: Searching the Deep Web

The term “Deep Web” is shorthand for “stuff Google doesn’t bother spidering,” thus keeping it essentially invisible to the majority of web users, who use Brother Google as their sole guide to the web. A new search service named Twing shines a light into one vast, overlooked and easily derided shaft of the Deep Web: discussion forums.

Yes, we’re talking about those retro-web gathering spots, many designed during the early years of the Clinton Administration–back when blogs, social bookmarking and YouFaceMyTubeSpaceBook rumpus rooms were barely gleams in a delusional VC’s eye. Forums have the visual elegance of parking tickets. You often feel like you need a red-tipped cane to navigate them. Some even have little spinning logos.

And so I was startled to discover how many of these forums are going strong.

On Twing’s list of active forums I came across the following, all active as of this week and (per Twing’s calculations) growing:

• 3.2 million posts and 37,000 members in the Long Hair Care forum
• 2.5 million posts and 23,000 users in the Arofanatics forum (aquarium fish)
• 2 million posts and over 30,000 users in the OffshoreOnly forum (power boating)

Of course there are huge numbers of forums devoted to cars, guns, pets and games. And celebrities.

But let me remind you how ugly, dysfunctional and user-indifferent this forum software is. Here’s what the Long Hair Care forum looks like:

A good question is: Under what conditions might you want to use Twing as a search engine?

The answer, per Scott Germaise, Twing’s Director of Product Management [I'm paraphrasing from his e-mail response to my questions]: Whenever you’re looking not for information about the thing, but for conversations about the thing. I did a bunch of searches and can report that for many topics [one I tried: Bolshevism], Google returns basic high-value content pages. Twing delivers odd little snatches of conversation–people are still discussing Bolshevism!–that occur in active forums.

Google often surfaced active forums among search results. Twing delivered those only, and more of them.

Messing around with Twing reminded me of the early days of Yahoo, when I could spend hours muttering to myself, “who are these freaking people?” as the world’s remarkable obscurities slid across the screen. It also illustrated how. . .burnished and predictable and gamed the web has become. A lot of the loopiest, most strangely human content has sunk from view.

I have no idea whether there is a business here, or whether I will use Twing for any real-life searches that GooHoo can’t handle.

But Twing has shown me this: That whole creating communities-of-shared-interests thing? That whole power-of-collective wisdom thing? That whole long tail thing? You know, that whole web 2.0 thing?

It’s been under our noses all along. We just forgot where to look