Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age

Tech.edu: A Hopkins Series on Education and Technology

by Thomas Leitch

Explores the battle between the top-down authority traditionally ascribed to experts and scholars and the bottom-up authority exemplified by Wikipedia. Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has been a lightning rod for debates about knowledge and traditional authority. It has come under particular scrutiny from publishers of print encyclopedias and college professors, who are skeptical about whether a crowd-sourced encyclopedia―in which most entries are subject to potentially endless reviewing and editing by anonymous collaborators whose credentials cannot be established―can ever truly be accurate or authoritative. In Wikipedia U , Thomas Leitch argues that the assumptions these critics make about accuracy and authority are themselves open to debate. After all, academics are expected both to consult the latest research and to return to the earliest sources in their field, each of which has its own authority. And when teachers encourage students to master information so that they can question it independently, their ultimate goal is to create a new generation of thinkers and makers whose authority will ultimately supplant their own. Wikipedia U offers vital new lessons about the nature of authority and the opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0. Leitch regards Wikipedia as an ideal instrument for probing the central assumptions behind liberal education, making it more than merely, as one of its severest critics has charged, “the encyclopedia game, played online.”

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 2, 2014

Reviews

[Jill Pfuetze Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful, informative, well-written.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given that the focus of this book was the nature of authority, I think that organizing it as though the main focus was Wikipedia did the book a disservice. For example, one of the first topics of the book is on the origins of Wikipedia. This is a topic I'm very curious about, but the discussion here was so theoretical, I didn't feel I learned much. There were a lot of digressions into the history of computers, the history of dictionaries, etc, which were only necessary so the author could make some abstract points about the nature of authority. These points weren't very clear or well organized because the whole chapter was divided based on different aspects of Wikipedia, instead of based on different points the author was trying to make about authority.

Like Generic, this is a John Hopkins University Press book, so I did expect it to be academic and wouldn't knock it too much for simply being dry. Unfortunately, the whole book was a poorly organized mishmash of entertaining stories and abstract discussion of authority. There were also some academic errors, including conclusions I found illogical and injections of the author's political views without supporting citations. As a result, I don't think this book was a success as either an entertaining read or as a well thought out scholarly work.This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey.

[Catfish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read this because I am always teaching that Wikipedia is a good diving board into research, but not itself, cite-able. I wanted a measure of accuracy. I found a little of this in Leitch's book.

This book draws some from The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture and the documentary _The Truth According to Wikipedia_ (which I haven't yet seen). I find that the author had an obsession with cooperative projects not producing the next Mozart, etc., and I think it's a false dichotomy. Each community like Reddit or Imgur has its own style and humor that constantly creates original content. Three or four times mentioning how we're not producing Mozarts left me nonplussed or even upset with the book. There was a good section summarizing the work of Taha Yasseri. I did pick up a better understanding of how Wikipedia works, concepts/norms like No Original Research, and Neutral POV.

Overall it's a quick read and worth it for raising some issues concerning authority, cooperation, the future of research--but certainly not claiming to solve anything. There is even a section at the end for group projects.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting topic but a plodding treatment and ridden with "howlers."