There is an
interesting post by Dr. Subhash Kak on the medium. The post is titled “Wikipedia
or Trashpedia”. It is a post or a rant or an exasperation or warning but nevertheless
posits few pointers good or bad that cannot be ignored. Its contention is the
on the nature and content of Wikipedia when it comes to dealing with
non-European or non-Western cultures. Without doubt Wikipedia is the numero uno
when it comes to information. It is perhaps the largest repository of
information and to boost the same, it is dynamic. Hardly any information
repository has come close to Wikipedia in achieving the compiling of
information about almost everything under the sun and beyond in such a short
period of time. It’s business model so as to speak has been of difference which
has brought in numerous books and publications that extoll it to be classic
example of what lies ahead in our production, distribution and consumption
models. It is deemed as perfect platform for the emergence of what Toffler had
long coined the word ‘prosumer’.
Indubitably, Wikipedia
is the first source of information for many. It might be considered as a fringe
in scholastic circles but to a common man or a woman, it is the source of
information about anything they desire to seek about. A satisfaction of
curiosity happens through glance at the Wiki rather than browsing through high
end scholastic encyclopaedias. Britannica might command respect but its price
makes it unaffordable to many. To scholars, the research on information they
garner through Wiki is just a beginning and their research is based on hundreds
of sources. While they might not cite Wikipedia to boost their conclusions,
they might very well begin their journey from Wiki. To a commoner, the Wiki is
often an end in itself. In that context, Wiki propagating thrash could be of
serious concern.
Wikipedia builds
its production process through crowdsourcing. It is something akin to a Tom
Sawyer economy. People contribute to the same for many reasons. It could be
just the joy it gives in contribution to reciprocal altruism to an outcome of
backward bending labour supply curve to fulfilment of what psychologists term
the need for achievement or need for affiliation. A detailed analysis of the
same has been captured in this post.
Wikipedia has
some great entries in the fields of sciences. As Dr. Kak points out, it is in
respect of the non-Western subjects that Wiki creates a biased information
flowing out of the same. Wikipedia revolved around what it called the
meritocracy. Its principle was people begin to contribute to Wikipedia. If
there were to exist errors in entries, there would be immediate corrections by
the others. The Wisdom of Crowds to borrow from James Suroweicki, would ensure
the Wiki remains error free. Furthermore, Wiki mandated its contributors to
cite each of their entries. Thus there would hardly be opinionated source but
the information would flow from well-established and cited sources. The scope
for plagiarism thus would be very low or even zero. The collective intelligence
of editors would ensure the corrections are dynamic. Moreover, the appointment
of editors differed from conventional means. The scholarship was not the
criteria but their constructive contributions to building the repository was. If
the editor would contribute in building the encyclopaedia and faced zero to
negligible changes to the content posted by him or her, he/she was deemed scholastic
enough.
Yet, the
meritocracy has given shape to what one can term as editor capture or content
capture. Once the editor progressed sufficiently high, it is in their self-interest
to prevent others from competing with them. There is a significant possibility
of cartel being formed in the editors which would erect significant barriers of
entry for the others. While the mission of Wikipedia was to project a neutral
stance, there was always a possibility of building inconvenient data or
information as thrash. This was perhaps not possible in some areas or
disciplines in the Western context but was relatively easy in the subjects
pertaining to India etc. In the Indian history, culture, society context, the
left cartel had already projected its version as the only version of these
subjects. Anything contrary was revisionism by the Hindu right which thrived on
rhetoric rather than scholastic backing and thus not worthy of merit. The left
in India was very quick in identifying the potential of Wikipedia and captured it
pretty fast. They significantly moved quickly even to capture regional language
versions. The right had no plan to capture or contest Wiki. As Dr. Kak’s post
indicates, they continue to dismiss as thrashpedia without understanding the
mind space it has captured in the common man/woman.
While Dr. Kak
might be right in thrashing the current content posted on some topics, the
fault lies to great extent on the right itself. In India, the right has been
too obsessed with the text books and remained oblivious of change happening in
the digital domain. These changes were and are transforming the way we produce,
distribute and consume information. For long, the right wing dismissed these
with disdain talking it carried no value. In fact, Dr. Kak’s proposition itself
is a symptom of the same though in the end he does call for the creation of
Indian Wikipedia. Sometime back, this post
did discuss the way forward for the dissemination of Indic thoughts in the digital
domain. It recognized the battles for Indic thoughts do not lie in the erstwhile
brick and mortar model but lie in the digital space where Wiki and other
similar tools are commanding significant market share.
The right must
come out of denial of the digital space that is opening numerous possibilities for
knowledge dissemination. It is relatively easy to dismiss Wikipedia and like as
thrash but the manner in which they changed the assimilation of information is
unparalleled. The focus on text books must end. In fact, text book content committee
itself is likely to go through Wikipedia for inclusion of content. The search
begins through Google and Wiki. There are thousand things wrong on this but the
right wing in the Indic context must realise they need to adopt the same modus
operandi to build an alternative ecosystem. The ecosystem that emerges must be
bottom up. The contributions must come from each and every one commoner and not
restrict to the contributions of the elite. In fact, there is strong visibility of elitism
in the Indic right wing though it was the bottom up social media revolution
that made them possible to occupy the current slots. They would not let go this
opportunity. They want to capitalize on the same and capture positions in the
text book committees etc. to secure the privileges. Apparently, Hindu
renaissance is the least of the priorities. Unless these priorities are sorted
out, the things will remain as status quo.
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