Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia

Centralization of power by definition creates imbalance. One can certainly argue whether imbalance is bad per se, but empirically, such imbalance hurts the very society it is supposed to help. The main problem with power centers is that one needs to believe in the benevolence of those who control them -- something which is hard to find in supposedly noble fields such as academics or medicine. The less said is better about other fields.

Decentralization of powers is always opposed by the power centers, again for the simple reason that by definition, it's the movement of power away from them. In any field, the establishment is the de-facto power centerer -- and it makes it as hard as possible for the rebels. Predictably, then revolutions turn violent. That's not a justification of violence, by any stretch of imagination -- it's just contextualizing it. But, can there ever be non-violent revolutions? Or is it a contradiction in terms?

The reason why I ask this is, violent revolutions -- if history is anything to go by -- are rarely sustained. There is a cold logic behind it. Revolutions spend their energies breaking down the establishment (which is powerful) and become reactive when the establishment strikes back, which it eventually does -- as establishment has a strong self-preservation instinct (or else, they wouldn't be around). In the ruins of what's left, the best of the establishment (and in a Grey world, there is always good and bad on both sides) is lost. And so are the constructive energies of the revolutionaries. In the end, bringing down the establishment proves far more easy, than reconstructing an alternative. A perfect example of this phenomenon are Marxist/communist revolutions around the world.

Enter cyberspace, and the very notion of centralization is conspicuous by its absence. Never before has fringe elements enjoyed so much power of expression -- and without the risk of persecution. And it's this decentralization that has paved a way for a counter culture.

In Blogs and Google Bombs: Technology Strikes, I discussed how weblogs are challenging the traditional media. But another quite revolution is underway in the area of encyclopedias -- the official knowledge sources. This revolution, called Wikipedia, is a result of a fundamentally distributed approach to managing knowledge. So what is a Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia written collaboratively by contributors from around the world. The site is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit this page link.

Wiki, then is the underlying distributed construct that's worth exploring. A wiki, is simply a website, where anyone -- let's get it straight -- absolutely anyone can edit, add, delete any page or content on any page. Sound lot like anarchy, isn't it? But wiki's are extremely useful because of the very anarchism. Since knowledge is power, Encyclopedias are a power tool. Think about it, the traditional encyclopedias are edited by a handful, contributed to by a limited number of people (the so called experts). That means, in humanities in particular, prejudices of few get approved as formal knowledge. The cultures that are less powerful are misrepresented, their histories twisted, their myths exoticised, their experts marginalized. That's where Wikipedia comes in:

Wikipedia is a project that is maintained by Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. It already has 400,000 plus articles just in English language in less than four years. Compare that to Encyclopædia Britannica's -- one of the most well known Encyclopædic projects -- 120,000 articles. And Wikipedia is being maintained in around fifty languages! But volumes isn't what differentiates Wikipedia. Wikipedia is free, it is vastly interlinked, and it is being updated every second. What it also means, is that it's hard for a single person/group to maintain knowledge hegemony over it. To summarize:

1. Wikipedia is maintained by volunteers across the globe, and hence the material in it is more often than not up to date
   
2. Wikipedia tends to even out editorial balance, as there is no central authority that endorses or rejects contents
   
3. Wikipedia is highly interlinked, thus making navigation very easy
   
4. There is higher possibility of Wikipedia dealing with fringe subjects, as long as there is a volunteer ready to contribute.
   

This bring us to the question, is Wikipedia just a collection of modern folk-lore? For in the absence of consistent editorial policy, how does one stop it from being degenerated into folk-lore? Is Wikipedia democratic knowledge or just trash? Even a cursory look at Wikipedia will testify to its quality of content. Folk-lore is probably underestimated, because of (almost dogmatic) belief of the western society in centralization. In reality, it's not the nut cases that sit and edit wikis. It's typically people who know what they're talking about. Wikis are typically overseen by a few people, who are interested in the subject, and who edit out garbage time and again. Plus the whole history of modifications is available to any end user. Yes, there are limitations to Wikipedia, but undoubtedly, it's a silent revolution that would shape future generations.