Social Epistemology 26 (1):71-103 (2012)
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Abstract |
The ideas behind open source software are currently applied to the production of encyclopedias. A sample of six English text-based, neutral-point-of-view, online encyclopedias of the kind are identified: h2g2, Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, Encyclopedia of Earth, Citizendium and Knol. How do these projects deal with the problem of trusting their participants to behave as competent and loyal encyclopedists? Editorial policies for soliciting and processing content are shown to range from high discretion to low discretion; that is, from granting unlimited trust to limited trust. Their conceptions of the proper role for experts are also explored and it is argued that to a great extent they determine editorial policies. Subsequently, internal discussions about quality guarantee at Wikipedia are rendered. All indications are that review and ?super-review? of new edits will become policy, to be performed by Wikipedians with a better reputation. Finally, while for encyclopedias the issue of organizational trust largely coincides with epistemological trust, a link is made with theories about the acceptance of testimony. It is argued that both non-reductionist views (the ?acceptance principle? and the ?assurance view?) and reductionist ones (an appeal to background conditions, and a?newly defined??expertise view?) have been implemented in editorial strategies over the past decade
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Keywords | encyclopedia open source testimony trust Wikipedia |
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DOI | 10.1080/02691728.2011.605478 |
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References found in this work BETA
A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England.Steven Shapin - 1994 - University of Chicago Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Responsible Epistemic Technologies: A Social-Epistemological Analysis of Autocompleted Web Search.Boaz Miller & Isaac Record - 2017 - New Media and Society 19 (12):1945-1963.
Trustworthiness and Truth: The Epistemic Pitfalls of Internet Accountability.Karen Frost-Arnold - 2014 - Episteme 11 (1):63-81.
Coercion or Empowerment? Moderation of Content in Wikipedia as 'Essentially Contested' Bureaucratic Rules.Paul B. de Laat - 2012 - Ethics and Information Technology 14 (2):123-135.
NAVIGATING BETWEEN CHAOS AND BUREAUCRACY: BACKGROUNDING TRUST IN OPEN-CONTENT COMMUNITIES.Paul B. de Laat - 2012 - In Karl Aberer, Andreas Flache, Wander Jager, Ling Liu, Jie Tang & Christophe Guéret (eds.), 4th International Conference, SocInfo 2012, Lausanne, Switzerland, December 5-7, 2012. Proceedings. Springer.
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