I think that what he means by having the errors be viewed as “social constructs “ is that they help us view the information as something that other people have spent time researching and discovering for themselves first. They then see the information as a productive source of knowledge and they feel that it should be shared with other people. The researchers may paraphrase the information so that it will be easier for the next reader to grasp; and in that time of rephrasing, some errors may occur. These kinds of errors shouldn’t be scolded to the point of condemnation that most articles on Wikipedia receive. The information is viewed as faulty and erred. They should view the information as a rough outline that can be used as a community builder. This way it shows whether or not the community actually cares about having everything all polished up for it’s big debut. If an article is made with some grammatical errors and no one changes them, it shows that the community isn’t interested in, one, the topic most likely, and two helping the article be the best it can be. If the article does have had the small changes made to it that shows the community is growing and it wants the information to be correct and as up to date as possible. I think people freak out about Wikipedia and it’s errors for the same reason it’s so great about having the errors fixed. It’s an open book to a community. And the people who view it as a problem only think of the negative connotations that go with it. They trust Britannica more because it’s set in stone and no one can mess with the information until a new book is printed. They trust that the encyclopedia has picked out the “experts” on each topic and that because of this reason; the errors are more typos than people “messing with the facts”. I think Williams has helped answer the question as to why Wikipedia is criticized so much. People aren’t trusting to things that move quickly and have fluidity to them. They want the facts and not have them change anytime soon.
I really like your statement about "if people didn't care about an article, they wouldn't bother to edit it." That is so true . . . good or bad, at least you get a reaction, I feel that its worse to get no response at all.
ReplyDeleteI like how you tied in the idea that a community, in a way, defines which rules it finds important to follow. This is a great way of explaining the idea of error as a social construct. I didn’t necessarily directly pick up on that and it’s given me a bit of a new perspective on the article.
ReplyDeleteI like how you talked about how some articles, being the more important, most viewed articles would most likely have little to no errors at all because the interest is there and people are checking it out all the time, while some articles with less interest are the ones that still have some grammar issues and other problems. Because of this, I bet most wikipedia articles that get roughly to "the best it can be" status because so many people check it all the time, are in fact better and more in depth than any britanica or other encyclopedia article on the same topic.
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