I’m under the impression that most encyclopedias had articles written by a single author, chosen as an expert on the subject. As such, the article on “Christianity” would be written by a renowned Christian theologian, or historian of Christendom; with no contribution by (for instance) any Muslims, Buddhists, neopagans, or atheists. While the author would be expected not to come across as overtly partisan, there’s not necessarily any correction for biases inherent in that author’s point of view.
This is a different approach from Wikipedia’s NPOV, where work on an article is expected to converge towards a point where contributors from multiple points of view find it equitable. Wikipedia doesn’t demand that any given editor write a fair treatment of the POV opposing her own (although “writing for the enemy” is offered as an ideal); rather, she’s merely expected to work with other editors from different points of view toward a common goal of a good consensus article.
One of the controversies surrounding Wikipedia is that it demands that experts submit to the NPOV policy and to having their work edited by non-experts as well — rather than asking other editors to defer to their expertise. This is in contrast with competing projects Nupedia (now defunct), Citizendium, and Knol, which propose to attract expert editors by giving them a greater voice.
One of the controversies surrounding Wikipedia is that it demands that experts submit to the NPOV policy and to having their work edited by non-experts as well — rather than asking other editors to defer to their expertise. This is in contrast with competing projects Nupedia (now defunct), Citizendium, and Knol, which propose to attract expert editors by giving them a greater voice.
It is worth noting here that Citizendium and Knol both failed as well—Citizendium was overrun by pseudoscientists (who know how to work credentials) and Knol became more or less a crank and spam dump. In the attempt to appeal to writers, they utterly failed to appeal to readers.
It’s also worth noting that Wikipedia has lots of experts editing in their fields anyway. It turns out that if you’re the encyclopedia that everyone actually reads, people will go to some effort to get their field properly documented.
The expert problem is still a problem, of course. Wikipedia can’t keep idiots out of experts’ faces, but then Wikipedia can’t keep idiots out of anyone’s faces.
Britannica authors, for instance, are Britannica authors first and moneymakers second and opinionated people third or fourth. Wikipedia authors are highly opinionated, and are compromising (which fixes some objectivity problems but is a poor substitute for objectivity or neutrality). So the Britannica author is likely to be less expert than the sum of wikipedia authors but much more neutral.
This is surmise when the material for the test is available. Factual accuracy has been compared more than once between Wikipedia and Britannica—has anyone attempted to compare neutrality? How would we actually do this? I suspect no-one has as yet, but it’s one I’d quite like to see if we can interest a third party in doing!
(Old editions of Britannica are notoriously bad for this, by the way. They were written to quite definitely inculcate a given cultural viewpoint and are loaded with opinion. This was a major problem in seeding Wikipedia with 1911 Britannica material in the early days—the stuff just didn’t pass NPOV muster. I would be unsurprised if more recent editions did much better; Wikipedia’s notion of NPOV is really obviously a current cultural construct.)
Well, to compare neutrality we can do one of four things:
a: rely on the impressions of people who’ve used both (survey people who’ve claimed to have read both)
b: trace the prior likelihood of either group of authors being biased on the material they’re writing about (the profit motive vs writing about what you’re passionate about)
c: ask contributors what they’ve seen done that damages the neutral point of view
d: come up with a neutral definition of neutrality.
It sounds like you want to do d: how might we start on such a thing?
Oh, and obviously yeah—“neutral” will depend on your culture. Objectivity might or might not, but neutrality must. So this makes d trickier.
I’d expect something like (a): get experts to say whether the articles constitute a reasonable survey of the field. We’d probably need (d) as well, because the way I just defined (a) is one definition of a good neutral Wikipedia article.
Is Britannica trying specifically for neutrality? It claims authority (whereas Wikipedia explicitly claims none which is why we’re so obsessive about references), but I’m not sure it kowtows to such culturally relativistic notions as “neutral”. The Wikipedia article on Britannica notes that EB has been lauded as increasingly less biased with time, but then Wikipedia would note that. Glancing at britannica.com, I can’t find a claim as to what it represents editorially except that it’s Britannica, you know, Britannica, so I’m not sure what would be a fair test to them.
This is getting wildly off topic … I suppose it’s vaguely related to politics by reframing while trying to be aware of and flag the reframings so as to avoid mind-killing … this is the sort of thing my autodidact’s knowledge of postmodernism comes in handy for.
I wouldn’t mind “ask experts who do not post to Wikipedia or write for Britannica” to rate the articles for accuracy, neutrality, etc. I would expect them to call Wikipedia more comprehensive, to call Britannica more neutral, and I have no idea which would be rated more accurate. If they did indeed call the Wikipedia articles more neutral, I’d have to update my understanding of the field.
My experience: I fixed mistakes in two articles, then got thoroughly distressed and stopped participating. I’m an anesthesiologist, as background. The first article was on a painkiller, and I found my changes overwritten by a drug enthusiast who believes/writes that narcotics are non-addictive. I did not push the issue. The second article was on anesthesia, and I linked to a reference document published by the American Society of Anesthesiologists (the premier research organization of anesthesiologists in the US.) A nurse anesthetist editor was very proud of his ability to prevent any documents from the ASA from being linked to on the page while maintaining a link to the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, and made it clear that it was his “turf” and that he was highly political. I did persist briefly to see what would happen: he tracked my real identity and threatened me. I immediately lost all interest.
I don’t believe Britannica is trying for neutrality per se. I believe it’s trying for objectivity, which is related but nonidentical. On many topics wikipedia attempts objectivity as well rather than neutrality (evolution vs intelligent design, for instance).
I’m under the impression that most encyclopedias had articles written by a single author, chosen as an expert on the subject. As such, the article on “Christianity” would be written by a renowned Christian theologian, or historian of Christendom; with no contribution by (for instance) any Muslims, Buddhists, neopagans, or atheists. While the author would be expected not to come across as overtly partisan, there’s not necessarily any correction for biases inherent in that author’s point of view.
This is a different approach from Wikipedia’s NPOV, where work on an article is expected to converge towards a point where contributors from multiple points of view find it equitable. Wikipedia doesn’t demand that any given editor write a fair treatment of the POV opposing her own (although “writing for the enemy” is offered as an ideal); rather, she’s merely expected to work with other editors from different points of view toward a common goal of a good consensus article.
One of the controversies surrounding Wikipedia is that it demands that experts submit to the NPOV policy and to having their work edited by non-experts as well — rather than asking other editors to defer to their expertise. This is in contrast with competing projects Nupedia (now defunct), Citizendium, and Knol, which propose to attract expert editors by giving them a greater voice.
It is worth noting here that Citizendium and Knol both failed as well—Citizendium was overrun by pseudoscientists (who know how to work credentials) and Knol became more or less a crank and spam dump. In the attempt to appeal to writers, they utterly failed to appeal to readers.
It’s also worth noting that Wikipedia has lots of experts editing in their fields anyway. It turns out that if you’re the encyclopedia that everyone actually reads, people will go to some effort to get their field properly documented.
The expert problem is still a problem, of course. Wikipedia can’t keep idiots out of experts’ faces, but then Wikipedia can’t keep idiots out of anyone’s faces.
The Internet: optimizing idiot delivery to people’s faces since the late 20th century.
Britannica authors, for instance, are Britannica authors first and moneymakers second and opinionated people third or fourth. Wikipedia authors are highly opinionated, and are compromising (which fixes some objectivity problems but is a poor substitute for objectivity or neutrality). So the Britannica author is likely to be less expert than the sum of wikipedia authors but much more neutral.
This is surmise when the material for the test is available. Factual accuracy has been compared more than once between Wikipedia and Britannica—has anyone attempted to compare neutrality? How would we actually do this? I suspect no-one has as yet, but it’s one I’d quite like to see if we can interest a third party in doing!
(Old editions of Britannica are notoriously bad for this, by the way. They were written to quite definitely inculcate a given cultural viewpoint and are loaded with opinion. This was a major problem in seeding Wikipedia with 1911 Britannica material in the early days—the stuff just didn’t pass NPOV muster. I would be unsurprised if more recent editions did much better; Wikipedia’s notion of NPOV is really obviously a current cultural construct.)
Well, to compare neutrality we can do one of four things: a: rely on the impressions of people who’ve used both (survey people who’ve claimed to have read both) b: trace the prior likelihood of either group of authors being biased on the material they’re writing about (the profit motive vs writing about what you’re passionate about) c: ask contributors what they’ve seen done that damages the neutral point of view d: come up with a neutral definition of neutrality.
It sounds like you want to do d: how might we start on such a thing?
Oh, and obviously yeah—“neutral” will depend on your culture. Objectivity might or might not, but neutrality must. So this makes d trickier.
I’d expect something like (a): get experts to say whether the articles constitute a reasonable survey of the field. We’d probably need (d) as well, because the way I just defined (a) is one definition of a good neutral Wikipedia article.
Is Britannica trying specifically for neutrality? It claims authority (whereas Wikipedia explicitly claims none which is why we’re so obsessive about references), but I’m not sure it kowtows to such culturally relativistic notions as “neutral”. The Wikipedia article on Britannica notes that EB has been lauded as increasingly less biased with time, but then Wikipedia would note that. Glancing at britannica.com, I can’t find a claim as to what it represents editorially except that it’s Britannica, you know, Britannica, so I’m not sure what would be a fair test to them.
This is getting wildly off topic … I suppose it’s vaguely related to politics by reframing while trying to be aware of and flag the reframings so as to avoid mind-killing … this is the sort of thing my autodidact’s knowledge of postmodernism comes in handy for.
I wouldn’t mind “ask experts who do not post to Wikipedia or write for Britannica” to rate the articles for accuracy, neutrality, etc. I would expect them to call Wikipedia more comprehensive, to call Britannica more neutral, and I have no idea which would be rated more accurate. If they did indeed call the Wikipedia articles more neutral, I’d have to update my understanding of the field.
My experience: I fixed mistakes in two articles, then got thoroughly distressed and stopped participating. I’m an anesthesiologist, as background. The first article was on a painkiller, and I found my changes overwritten by a drug enthusiast who believes/writes that narcotics are non-addictive. I did not push the issue. The second article was on anesthesia, and I linked to a reference document published by the American Society of Anesthesiologists (the premier research organization of anesthesiologists in the US.) A nurse anesthetist editor was very proud of his ability to prevent any documents from the ASA from being linked to on the page while maintaining a link to the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, and made it clear that it was his “turf” and that he was highly political. I did persist briefly to see what would happen: he tracked my real identity and threatened me. I immediately lost all interest.
I don’t believe Britannica is trying for neutrality per se. I believe it’s trying for objectivity, which is related but nonidentical. On many topics wikipedia attempts objectivity as well rather than neutrality (evolution vs intelligent design, for instance).