Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Citizen Critics: To Trust or Not to Trust?

According to the Wikipedia:About page, “Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on an openly editable model” (1). A large collaboration written by anonymous volunteers who can edit and make changes to the articles at their leisure, this presents problems of validity and credibility when trying to define the constituents and constraints of the Wikipedia project as a whole. Corbett and Eberly state in “Becoming a Citizen Critic” that, “Citizen criticism requires some sense of faith in whatever public or community is being addressed” (Corbett, Eberly 122). This is certainly true for users and collaborators of Wikipedia who must trust in the anonymous system in order for the site to function successfully. 

In her article “Finding the Good Argument,” Jones presents several rules for making arguments in discourse. The two most important ones in relation to freely editable projects such as Wikipedia include The Burden-of-Proof Rule and The Validity Rule. Jones defines the Burden-of-Proof rule saying, “If you make an argument, you have to provide evidence to back it up” (Jones 173). According to Jones, the Validity rule states, “The reasoning in the argumentation must be logically valid or must be capable of being made valid by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises” (Jones 176). Sources used on Wikipedia must provide evidence for what is said in an article and must be used to create a valid argument in order to produce accurate and trustworthy information. 

Wikipedia has categories for articles that are incomplete or require additional information. These are categorized as “stubs” for incomplete articles and “articles to be expanded” for those that could benefit from additional editing and sources. On Wikipedia you can enter anything into the search bar and you will either be brought directly to a page or given a list of redirection pages that may link you to the information you were looking for. 

One of the main arguments that Jones makes in her article is that, “What is often missing from these discussions is research, consideration of multiple vantage points, and, quite often, basic logic” (Jones 158). 

After doing a random search for several terms and topics relating to the public sphere and public policy, several of them linked to direct pages but others provided several redirection links which included some very useful sources and some that were irrelevant to the information being sought. Terms such as public sphere, public policy, Jim Crow, and criminal justice brought up direct pages with information usually beginning by offering a definition and history of the terms and then branching out into subcategories of these issues as all of these (aside from Jim Crow) are broad terms that do not pertain to one issue. 

Other searches, however, brought up redirection pages. A search for “criminal justice” brings up a direct page, but when changed to “criminal justice racism” a redirection page including links for sexism, racism, and racism in the United States come up. When searching for “race response” a redirection page for Race and Ethnicity in the United States Consensus is the result. Another search for “race response to Katrina” brought up redirection to Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Criticism of Government Response to Hurricane Katrina with Race as a Factor in Slow Response. All of these redirection pages were brought to attention from terms related to the public sphere and were useful links. Others came up which were not relevant but they are typically easy to weed out. 

As a collaborative website that could easily invite inaccurate or false information and plagiarism by its many contributors, Wikipedia has a “reliable sources” policy outlining that, “Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors.” Using a Wikipedia article titled “Reed Vole” from the “Did you know…” section of Wikipedia’s main page, the types of sources and how reliable they are can be examined. 

This article contained only three sources, all of which were from credited websites and one of which was from a book published by Princeton University Press. While all of these sources seem reliable and trustworthy, this does not mean that every fact in the article will be entirely correct. After randomly choosing five facts from this (short) article, four of the five matched up to the sources provided. The one fact that did not match up, I was unable to find in the sources. Another of the facts which reads, “The reed vole is native to eastern Asia,” was a correct fact but was an overgeneralization that could have included the more specific areas of Asia where this animal is found as well as failed to include that reed voles are also found in parts of Europe. 

In their article, Corbett and Eberly state, “Just because someone’s claim is supported by a so-called expert does not mean that it is beyond response or rebuttal. Be particularly aware of reasoners who use only ‘expert testimony’ to support their claims; such reasoning is often shallow and easily refuted” (Corbett, Eberly 127). Even though the sources in Wikipedia articles (and in “Reed Vole” in particular) are reputable sources, this doesn't mean that their validity should not be questioned or that every bit of information used by these sources in this article has been transferred over and used correctly. 

Four of the five facts were technically considered correct, so as a whole this article could be considered generally reliable information. However, while it is reliable, it could be made more reliable by including more information, more specifics, and more sources. When an article is lacking in these regards, it is up to the anonymous Wikipedia editors to correct them. Corbett and Eberly believe that, “In a democracy, rhetoric as the actualizer of potential depends on citizens who are able to imagine themselves as agents of action, rather than just spectators or consumers” (Corbett, Eberly 131). Those who anonymously edit for the Wikipedia world must take on this personhood as citizen critics and agents of action to edit and add information where articles are lacking to create more reliable and accurate articles. 




Corbett, Edward P.J., and Rosa A. Eberly. “Becoming a Citizen Critic: Where Rhetoric Meets the Road.” The Elements of Reading. 121-138. Web. 

Jones, Rebecca. “Finding the Good Argument OR Why Bother With Logic?” Writing Spaces: 
Readings on Writing. 156-179. Web.

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