From Adversaries to Allies? The Uneasy Relationship between Experts and the Wikipedia Community

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2020.12.003Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Collaborating with Wikipedia is increasingly common in academia, though barriers remain.

  • Wikipedia’s anti-elitist culture and academia’s anti-amateur culture are still at odds.

  • Many academics remain unaware of core Wikipedia characteristics (its nonprofit status; the growing consensus around the quality of its content).

  • Wikipedia challenges the primacy of scholarly expertise and blurs the line between experts and amateurs. The result is a clash between younger, more accepting academics and older, more suspicious colleagues.

  • A lack of knowledge and incentives, and a fear of ostracism prevent many academics from publicly collaborating with Wikipedia.

Abstract

As Wikipedia approaches its 20th anniversary, this article explores the complex relationship between the Wikipedia world and the world of academia. This article examines the ongoing debate about the quality and reliability of Wikipedia and its relationship to traditional reference works. It also examines the difficulties of experts who try to contribute to Wikipedia. It also considers the clash between amateur and expert practices of knowledge production and the lack of professional motivation for using Wikipedia in education and research.

Keywords

Wikipedia
New media
Academia
Education
Culture clash

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Peer review under responsibility of Tongji University.