An earlier version of this article was published in 2018.
Few digital spaces represent the democratization of knowledge driven by the Internet as prominently as Wikipedia. Since its founding it has become The Encyclopedia. It has achieved this in a peculiar way: those who work in its guts are not academics, or not always, but ordinary users who must discuss among themselves the best (and most equanimous) way to expose the available knowledge on millions of topics.
With a big problem. They are unable to agree.
That? An MIT study reveals how a third of open discussions on Wikipedia remain unresolved. A large number of articles are debated daily in the “Discussion” tabs, and a good handful of them end up in the list of “Request for Comments”, authentic forums where each user presents their argument and where the community supports a thesis in front of other. The content of the article depends on the outcome of the deliberations.
It works? Half. It appears that at least a third of RfCs never reach consensus. The researchers chose more than 7,000 articles between 2011 and 2017 and interviewed various frequent users involved in the process. Along the way, they discovered that the community prioritized consensus over a mere pure democratic arrangement (so many votes have an argument, so much their opinion is worth). And that consensus is extremely complex to obtain.
Why? Because that’s how democracy is. In the RfC you are worth as much as your arguments. But convincing someone else of your opinion, as other studies show, is difficult, if not impossible. The articles run into the natural walls of the political cede and concede: there are times when no one is simply willing to give his arm to twist. And that is why so many articles include boxes warning of the absence of consensus or neutrality on a topic.
Where? As you recall on Motherboard, discussions often revolve around the most mundane. Various publishers have been waging an incessant war over corn for years. We were able to observe it recently on account of the independence of Catalonia. Editors argued over whether Puigdemont’s original statement amounted to a DUI (no) and, if so, whether it set a new all-time record (seven seconds of independence before overturning).
It is important? Given that Wikipedia seems unlikely to fix itself for the inevitable dysfunctions of democracy, MIT research is important to better understand the digital encyclopedia. Not everything that appears on the page is an absolute truth, and different interests often operate in the setting of an article. And many times there is not even a firm consensus on what to say.