Thing 16 - Wikis

Just for the hell of it, I decided to look up elephants (if you don’t get the reference, continue to read and I’ll explain later) on SJCPLSubject Guides located here:
http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page

I immediately find this to be somewhere out of their subject range and can’t decide whether elephants fall under History-related Mysteries or Pets. They could fall under entertainment if you are thinking of the circus variety. Or maybe family history, depending on your family.

It wasn’t under history-related mysteries which turns out to be a classification of fictional mystery books. I then checked pets and that page tends to go toward the more traditional pets – cats, dogs, birds, lizards, whatever – but no elephants. I’ve then looked under crafts, gardening, publishing family history, travel, tax information, legal information and classes and none of them have anything about elephants.

I guess this is more of a browsing sort of Subject Guides and not meant for specific searching. Or they have something against elephants. Perhaps I just think of wikis as a source of information similar to an encyclopedia, seeing as those are the only ones I’ve encountered.

Moving on, I check out the BookLoversWiki from Princeton Public Library (http://booklovers.pbwiki.com/Princeton%20Public%20Library). This one seems to be more of an index to book reviews broken down by book types – autobiographies, poetry, science fiction, horror, chic lit, contemporary fiction, you get the point.

Browsing through the contemporary fiction, I did find a book titled Water for Elephants which is oddly closer to the first wiki that I tried to do a search of. Go fig. I guess I found the elephants when and where I least expected it. No, strike that. The least expected place would be under my desk or in my shower. (I need help, don’t I?)

Back to the elephant reference. In the spring or summer of 2006, The Cobert Show on Comedy Central, a satire of right wing pundit shows, stated about wikipedia that "You see, any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true." Seeing as on the show, Colbert has a problem with endangered species advocates, he then suggests that if enough people go into Wikipedia and change then entries for elephants to say their population had tripled in the past six months it will become the “Truth”. Instead of reality this becomes wikiality or something like that. I just like the phrase wikiality. The problem was, a number of Colbert followers proceeded to do this. While a great number of people found this humorous, Wikipedia did not and once they realized what was happening, they corrected and locked the entry for elephants and only certain members (or maybe it’s anyone who’s an official member) can change the elephant entries. 2 ½ yrs later, the entry is still locked.

This demonstrates one of the greatest flaws with encyclopedic wikis, specifically Wikipedia. Ideally, everyone lends their own expertise to the entries, but a lot of people have less expertise than they might think. Kinda like cousin Bob adding to the entry on a type of brain surgery while he’s still convinced the brain is somewhere around his left knee. (actually, we’re not sure Bob has a brain, so the left knee is as good as anywhere else to start looking. The man’s head whistles in a crosswind.)

This is why I say Wikipedia is a good place to get a general idea about something, but double check your facts and check out their references if you intend to use it as a research source. I also don’t think anyone should cite it in a paper, but that’s my personal opinion and I’m a research snob.

Colbert show and Wikipedia’s elephants article:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6100754-7.html