In Praise of Chapter Five

I just finished reading chapter five of Bruns and found it to be very informative regarding the workings of Wikipedia.

I especially enjoyed reading the “Disrupting Wikipedia” section where critics’ arguments were raised and effectively addressed. Robert McHenry, formerly of Encyclopedia Britannica raised what seemed to be a valid point in comparing Wikipedia to a public restroom, in that you never know who used it last (Bruns, p127). His argument sounds valid until Bruns points out a few pages later that “Britannica itself adheres to a closed-source, “black box” model of content production which affords no transparency about the process to its consumer” (Bruns, p129)

In the next section, “Educating Wikipedia Users” Bruns points to the practice of many faculty and in academic institutions of banning Wikipedia from being used as a reference as “misguided” and “mideival in its approach” (Bruns, p132). These bans could better be used as teaching opportunities to educate students about the differences between open source content and the content found in traditional encyclopedias.

I raise this because I hear this argument from the dean of our institution’s history department. I look forward to engaging with this dean and raising the insights I gained from our reading.

In my view the Shirky book was a perfect quick overview complement to the Bruns book, and I look forward to reading more!