W4: After reading “The Puzzle of Openness”: Constraints for Wikipedia Openness

■ Wikipedia, the open content community

■ Contradiction: Even theoretically perfect openness leads to informal "structure."

■ Wikipedia's Openness vs. Limitations for Maintaining Quality

 

1) Wikipedia, the open content community

I learned about various anguish related to “Openness”, the inevitable attribute of Wikipedia, a representative open content community. Most importantly, in Wikipedia, where openness and freedom must be guaranteed, that is, editing restrictions must be restricted, it relates to cases where the contents of Wikipedia are maliciously attacked. Opinions were made as to whether such restrictions undermined Wikipedia's openness, or whether it was a very small necessity for greater openness.

Now, the quality of Wikipedia is maintained by restricting edits to specific pages for a certain period of time to trolls showing malicious edits.

 

2) Contradiction: Even theoretically perfect openness leads to informal "structure."

The most impressive thing was that a very complete open platform that people have been so desired and finally created leads to "structures" or any restriction, that could undermine that openness. It's very contradictory, but it's true. 

Wikipedia is an open content community that utilizes collective intelligence. If it stays in ideal condition, it's certainly a utopian site. However, as everyone knows, not everyone is ideal. That means there are definitely cases where they hurt the beautiful goals of the common. I believe that, as mentioned in reading, restrictions to some extent, so to prevent malicious trolls, are essential to maintain Wikipedia's quality. Of course, there should never be such a limitation prevent Wikipedia's essential characteristic of openness.

Most importantly, I think it’s needed to find an appropriate point between openness and limitation and balance it. Of course, I think it is difficult to find this spot. And we may never find it. But I think even trying to find the spot is meaningful.

 

3) Wikipedia's Openness vs. Limitations for Maintaining Quality

Maintaining the openness and quality of Wikipedia is both an important factor. In fact, it can be said that openness leads to quality maintenance. However, as mentioned above, openness also causes quality deterioration. I want to ask everyone. What would you like to focus more on, openness and restrictions for maintaining quality? So, what would you like to put more weight on as an essential feature of Wikipedia? I'm curious about people's opinions.

Would it be important to have a wiki as a place for everyone to participate? Or is the wiki as a high-quality encyclopedia important?

Comments

  1. Yerin LeeMarch 28, 2021 at 11:28 AM

    Minkyo, I read your article well! First of all, thank you for your great opinion this week :)

    Well, in the last paragraph, I want to focus more on openness. Wikipedia, to me, feels like a more open dictionary! It feels like I'm learning about the definition of an encyclopedia or a thesis, and it's about a change in the times. The encyclopedia continues to mean the same thing for a really long time and unless there's a big consensus process, right? But I think Wikipedia also shows the changing definition as times change. So I think it's more useful. What do you think?

    ReplyDelete

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