I was reading an interview today with Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopedia Britannica, in which he describes some of the Web 2.0-y tools that the company is preparing to roll out to enable readers to contribute to the encyclopedia’s content. (I’m on Britannica’s board of editorial advisors.) The interview touches, as you’d expect, on the great success that Wikipedia has achieved on the Web and, in particular, on its ever increasing dominance of Google search results. Cauz calls the tie between Wikipedia and Google “the most symbiotic relationship happening out there” – and I think he’s right.
Cauz’s remark reminded me that it’s been some time since I updated my informal survey of Wikipedia’s ranking on Google. A couple of years ago, I plucked from my brain, in as random a fashion as I could manage, ten topics from a range of knowledge domains: World War II, Israel, George Washington, Genome, Agriculture, Herman Melville, Internet, Magna Carta, Evolution, Epilepsy. I then googled each one to see where Wikipedia’s article on the topic would rank.
I first did the searches on August 10, 2006. The results showed that Wikipedia did indeed hold a strong position for each of the ten subjects:
World War II: #1
Israel: #1
George Washington: #4
Genome: #9
Agriculture: #6
Herman Melville: #3
Internet: #5
Magna Carta: #2
Evolution: #3
Epilepsy: #6
I next did the searches on December 14, 2007, and found that Wikipedia’s dominance of Google searches had, over the course of just a year and a half, grown dramatically:
World War II: #1
Israel: #1
George Washington: #2
Genome: #1
Agriculture: #1
Herman Melville: #1
Internet: #1
Magna Carta: #1
Evolution: #1
Epilepsy: #3
Today, another year having passed, I did the searches again. And guess what:
World War II: #1
Israel: #1
George Washington: #1
Genome: #1
Agriculture: #1
Herman Melville: #1
Internet: #1
Magna Carta: #1
Evolution: #1
Epilepsy: #1
Yes, it’s a clean sweep for Wikipedia.
The first thing to be said is: Congratulations, Wikipedians. You rule. Seriously, it’s a remarkable achievement. Who would have thought that a rag-tag band of anonymous volunteers could achieve what amounts to hegemony over the results of the most popular search engine, at least when it comes to searches for common topics.
The next thing to be said is: what we seem to have here is evidence of a fundamental failure of the Web as an information-delivery service. Three things have happened, in a blink of history’s eye: (1) a single medium, the Web, has come to dominate the storage and supply of information, (2) a single search engine, Google, has come to dominate the navigation of that medium, and (3) a single information source, Wikipedia, has come to dominate the results served up by that search engine. Even if you adore the Web, Google, and Wikipedia – and I admit there’s much to adore – you have to wonder if the transformation of the Net from a radically heterogeneous information source to a radically homogeneous one is a good thing. Is culture best served by an information triumvirate?
It’s hard to imagine that Wikipedia articles are actually the very best source of information for all of the many thousands of topics on which they now appear as the top Google search result. What’s much more likely is that the Web, through its links, and Google, through its search algorithms, have inadvertently set into motion a very strong feedback loop that amplifies popularity and, in the end, leads us all, lemminglike, down the same well-trod path – the path of least resistance. You might call this the triumph of the wisdom of the crowd. I would suggest that it would be more accurately described as the triumph of the wisdom of the mob. The former sounds benign; the latter, less so.
UPDATE: Interestingly, Britannica and Wikipedia seem to be headed toward a convergence in their editorial rules and regulations. After Wikipedia erroneously declared both Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd dead on Inauguration Day, the Register noted that an embarrassed Jimmy Wales intensified his push to get the Wikipedians to adopt a policy of Flagged Revisions, which would require edits of sensitive articles, including those on living persons, to be vetted by editors before being incorporated into the Wikipedia site. (In what may be a preview of Wikipedia’s future, the Flagged Revisions policy has already been adopted by the German Wikipedia for all articles.) Such a move would, of course, represent a continuation of Wikipedia’s ongoing tightening of editorial controls over its content.
Kevin,
There are, indeed, many forms of lock-in. Some are generally pretty good (English language); others are perhaps less good (Windows). It doesn’t seem to me that lumping them all together accomplishes much. Each needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
I’m too lazy to go through all ten of my terms and find alternatives to Wikipedia. But I’ll do the first one: World War II. I think the BBC site, which doesn’t appear on the first page of Google results, is superior to the Wikipedia entry:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/
If you want to define quality through a popularity contest, be my guest (and accept my condolences). But I would just point out (as I did earlier in this comment stream) that much of the linking to Wikipedia is now done by rote rather than through evaluation. If the basis of linking as an intellectual currency hinges on the embedding into links of considered opinion, then rote linking is a debasement of the currency and erodes the value of the entire system.
Nick
I’ve been watching this homogenization (with growing concern) from the point of view of a marginal opinion holder (I make films about sex.)
As little as three years ago we could count on good ideas, good intentions and generally acting in good faith to maintain some level of visibility on the internet.
But increasingly the internet is being replaced by the Googlenet, and the (as Seth puts it) value laden choices inherent in Google’s algorithms are steadily rendering us all but invisible.
Whether one thinks this is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of one’s own values. But it is a fact.
Nick,
Thanks for submitting a substitute candidate for your #1 choice for WWII. I went there with the idea that I did not know much about this topic, and found it very deep but very confusing. It was hard to enter, hard to get an overview, hard to get my head around. It was really ever laid out plainly. However, if I knew enough about what it was, then there was a TON of material.
Then I proceeded to Wikipedia’s page, and I got exactly what I needed. Even more importantly, Wikipedia is almost like McDonalds now. You know what to expect; it will be in the same quality as last time. This consistency and “averageness” actually helps in reading and digesting. The result is that I VASTLY preferred Wikipedia’s long detail treatment — and I would believe this is true for most people. I think this is why they return.
However, you have a very good point here, if true:
“But I would just point out (as I did earlier in this comment stream) that much of the linking to Wikipedia is now done by rote rather than through evaluation. If the basis of linking as an intellectual currency hinges on the embedding into links of considered opinion, then rote linking is a debasement of the currency and erodes the value of the entire system.”
If there was a blind routine where Wiki was always automatically linked to, then that could certainly create weirdness.
But is it true? What are you basing this on? Your own behavior or some other source? I link to Wikipedia a lot, but usualy after I inspect the outbound links, which I consider often the best deeper links. However I usually retreat back to Wiki because rarely is there an introductory article that is better.
In fact, I don’t think you mentioned this, but I think that folks have stopped writing introductory Wikipedia like articles because they are redudant.
Lastly, you did not bring up the positive aspects of lock-in. The more folks are routed to Wiki first, the more that are driven to work on it. So over time, Wiki will keep getting better at what it is made for — the first place you go to!
It become harder and harder to beat because 1) it is actually the best, and 2) it is so good no one else is doing it.
There may be some other lock-in dynamics at work, but I think the main force is merit. Wikipedia, like English, is a positive metric based lock-in.
It saddens me that someone would check the information held but not the sources of that information.
The main criterion for establishing a statement as “fact” is that they are supported by documented evidence, many wikipedians spend several hours checking their references and including them to “prove” their statements are factual.
Many of the more technical subjects are edited to/written at a level of graduate or post graduate, and the rest are more likely than not, at some point looked at and corrected by people with a deep knowledge of the subject matter. (for instance many of the projects include regular contributors from the leading 50 of their subject, astronomy, physics, geography etc)
I personally think that wikipedia is a necessary function and am disapointed that it appears that you write this article with the intention of putting people off looking there. You use the words triumvirate and refer to editors as “the mob” well perhaps you are being a little elitist in thinking that “the mob” cannot correctly assimilate facts into a well organised collection of references
Perhaps you could spend some time looking through it to see if any subject you personally have knowledge of is incorrect, and then you can quite easily correct it by hitting the “edit” tab at the top of the page.
That is the basic principle of wiki, correct bad information and put in some more correct information
PS For instance – would you mind checking your own page in Wikipedia and reporting back how many errors you find there ?
That, at least, would elucidate your point ?
“So over time, Wiki will keep getting better …”
Umm, citation needed? Maybe it’ll get worse.
And note, you’re doing an argument I find disturbingly similar to the following sequence (I don’t want to straw-man, so let me note I’m putting this forth for illustration)
1) Wikipedia article is awful
2) Because Wikipedia article is awful, but popular, expert must bail-out Wikipedia by working for free, defending text against degradation.
3) This proves the wiki process works! YAY Wikipedia!
Do you see the swindle here?
My $0.02:
http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/24/the-information-triumverate/