In this article, I respond to Robert McHenry’s anti-Wikipedia piece entitled “The Faith-Based Encyclopedia.” I argue that McHenry’s points are contradictory and incoherent and that his rhetoric is selective, dishonest and misleading. I also consider McHenry’s points in the context of all Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP), showing how they are part of a Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) campaign against CBPP. Further, I introduce some principles, which will help to explain why and how CBPP projects can succeed, and I discuss alternative ways they may be organized, which will address certain concerns.

Introduction

Recently, a friend of mine passed a rather noteworthy online article my way. The article, published in Tech Central Station, was entitled “The Faith-Based Encyclopedia,” and was written by Robert McHenry [McHenry, 2004]. McHenry, the Former Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica, was quite critical of Wikipedia in this article. Perhaps this comes as no surprise to readers who are already detecting the potential for a slight conflict of interest here. Still, I expected to learn something from this article, as Wikipedia is not perfect, and McHenry seemed like a reputable individual. Instead, I was greeted with an onslaught of FUD that left me flabbergasted. I can honestly say I learned nothing from “The Faith-Based Encyclopedia.”

The goal of FUD is to make money when the free software competition cannot be defeated fairly in the marketplace

For the uninitiated, FUD stands for “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.” It is a term popular within the free software community, used to describe the use of lies and deceptive rhetoric, aimed chiefly at free software projects. It is an accurate term. In brief, the goal of FUD is to make money when the free software competition cannot be defeated fairly in the marketplace. This can be done by scaring consumers through wild propaganda, or more recently, confusing courts through more subtle arguments.

Foremost in the FUD hall-of-shame are figures such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and SCO Corporation CEO Darl McBride. CEOs such as Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy advance FUD from time to time as it suits them, but are not as single-mindedly unrelenting as the worst of the bunch. For more information on these gentlemen, their claims, and the truth, I refer you to web logs such as Slashdot, Lawmeme, and Groklaw.

Wikipedia: hated by former editors of print encyclopedias everywhere?

McHenry’s article is not so much remarkable for its own points (which I dissect below) as for the reaction to it. Most people, even those who know Wikipedia well, seem to lack confidence regarding its role in society. Even Larry Sanger, a former project member and co-founder of Wikipedia, largely defers to McHenry’s sentiment [Sanger, 2004]. Sanger goes as far as suggesting Wikipedia needs to be more elitist (note how he doesn’t say more meritorious ), which would explicitly undermine the value of the project. I know other, very intelligent people, who had a “gosh, what were we thinking” reaction to McHenry’s article, as if an angry god had come down from upon high to punish them for falling astray.

These arguments are a new kind of FUD, aimed not just at open source software, but at any form of free or open resource

Some of this attitude is understandable—Wikipedia is so new that most people don’t know what to make of it. However, people like McHenry, with a vested interest or deep-seated bias, are ruthlessly taking advantage of this trepidation. I would implore everyone to weigh their own experiences in the matter much higher than the abstract arguments of third parties.

In the case of McHenry, I believe that these arguments are a new kind of FUD, aimed not just at free software, but at any form of free or open resource. I will make the case that there are in fact no terminally fatal shortcomings in Wikipedia, and that Robert McHenry is a pioneer of this new world of FUD, rightly deserving a spot next to Ballmer and McBride in the FUD pantheon.

FUDslingers: (from top-left, clockwise) Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, SCO’s Darl McBride, Sun’s Scott McNealy, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and now (pictured center), Britannica’s Robert McHenry?

Introduction to Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a collaborative, internet-based encyclopedia, made up of individual (but interconnected) entries. Anyone can create an entry for the encyclopedia, and anyone else can come along and edit existing entries. The intent is to tap the power of the general internet community’s knowledge and the desire to share that knowledge, to build a free, high-quality, comprehensive online encyclopedia.

At first blush, it might seem like this could not work, and that the result would be a chaotic mess. But it does work. This is true due to a number of features of the collaborative system (mediawiki) and underlying social dynamics. I will discuss these later.

Wikipedia is almost becoming authoritative, a fact which clearly upsets McHenry and similarly-situated individuals

Wikipedia is a good resource. In fact, it is an incredible resource. As a frequent user of Wikipedia, I believe I am qualified to make this determination. Hardly a day goes by without my accessing a handful of Wikipedia articles, either from a web search, forwarded by a friend spontaneously or in reference to a conversation we have had, linked from other Wikipedia articles, or accessed directly in an ad hoc fashion.

I have noticed recently that Wikipedia is being invoked more, and contains more articles of a higher quality than in the past. Further, I cannot remember the last time I accessed a Wikipedia article that was not of apparent professional quality. Indeed, Wikipedia is almost becoming authoritative, a fact which clearly upsets McHenry and similarly-situated individuals.

I have never used an encyclopedia as much as Wikipedia and I thank the Wikipedia community for what they have created. Countless others share these sentiments. Wikipedia has enhanced my life and brought considerable progress to society. I consider these facts so easy to demonstrate that they are pointless to debate.

It is into this milieu that McHenry’s article arrives. Suffice it to say, I find his attitude and claims a little surprising, given the above observations. Those I know who are involved with Wikipedia do not seem to have received the same memo on the imminent collapse of their project. But as Görring once said, the bigger the lie, the more people who will believe it. I think this is what McHenry is shooting for.

Response to McHenry

McHenry’s central thesis is that, quite contrary to general observation, Wikipedia is a poor-quality resource, that it is in a constant state of chaos, and that these problems will tend to get worse over time. Of course, he doesn’t explain how one is to reconcile this claim with the increasing popularity of Wikipedia, other than a veiled suggestion that people are simply stupid.

McHenry begins his article with a proof-by-denigration. He takes the entire proposition, that a commons-based collaborative encyclopedia could even be successful, as ridiculously out-of-hand. He recounts Wikipedia’s failed first start as “Interpedia,” which I presume is done to poke fun at the concept, the people, and the community process behind Wikipedia. Then, in heavily loaded terms, he characterizes the claim of increasing quality as (emphasis added):