Dave Winer (Scripting News) has been posting recently on Wikipedia's shortfallings.
On the unavoidable bias in Wikipedia edits he asks:
Isn't there a place in this century for historians, non-participants who observe and report on the events?
In particular, Dave is speaking of recent issues involving recording the history of podcasting.
How do non-participating historians decide what is worthy to be called history? How do they get their information? What triggers the requirement to track down more accurate information?
Is there is a place in this century for historians to observe and report on absolutely everything absolutely everyone does just in case it is historically interesting? Who says this isn't what Wikipedia is?
The job of historians isn't to record and report everything. That is an archivist.
A historian's job is to filter the published information and use it to prompt the search for more information, resulting in the publication of an article on "the history of [topic]". An article that will forever be, from the moment of it's creation, updated with more information as it is found.
Anyone researching an article on the "history of [topic]" will know those creating history are unlikely to record it properly, and if they do, they won't do it publicly, or they'll record information they think is relevant, but turns out to be irrelevant. They are unlikely to even be aware they are creating history. When they do realise the historical significance of their actions they cannot write about the topic without bias.
Further... third-parties reporting on history at any point on a timeline are unlikely to have the passion required to research and report properly.
On such a recent topic (podcasting) the only two sets of people who could report on it's history are:
Wikipedia articles on a topic are not supposed to be created by persons involved in that topic. This avoids topic-squatting by the historically uninteresting. Any article created for "Andrew Bowie" on Wikipedia is likely to be on the author, not me. That is as it should be.
Unfortunately this means that the evolution of a Wikipedia article from badly researched "placeholder" to informative article is slow and painful.
Is there any way to write a history on such a recent topic without it being either incomplete or biased?
I'll ask this:
Who would bother writing a history of podcasting without the seed first being created on something as public and widely read as Wikipedia?
Before someone decided the history of podcasting was interesting enough to be a Wikipedia topic, was anyone carefully recording and compiling this history?
Before wrong information was published and presented as fact, would the postcasting community have fought to find and publish the actual facts? Or would we be stuck with vague mutterings about unresearched news articles and lack of recognition buried in blog posts, invisible on the 100th page of Google searches?
By it's popularity and high visibility, the Wikipedia article has dragged the issue into the spotlight and forced it's revision by those able to provide solid and accurate information. The arguments are out in the open, the blogposts have been published. All have been stored on archive.org.
Through this, history has been created and recorded, when it otherwise wouldn't have been.
Unlike a poorly researched news article in a newspaper, a Wikipedia article can be corrected. It is, and will forever be, a work in progress.
Perhaps that should be in giant red letters in the Wikipedia banner?
We need to remember to look at the whole picture, the most recent version of that picture, and be aware all history is the beta version until printed on acid free paper, buried, and found ten thousand years later by peoples unable to check the written facts.
I'm avoiding directly personal posts these days so if I haven't mentioned you, don't be offended. I do care.
Hugs etc.
I do desperately need to update my links list though. So many blogs these days. Done.