Society is running up against the truth of what ‘Peer Review’ actually means and finding it disconcerting. The notion that truth by committee as practiced on wikipedia is something different than truth by committee as practiced by a journal is getting tiresome[5]. When society actually uses this idea of Peer Review to create[1] the most powerful and easy to use system of edit and review so far, articles like this bemoan that we have somehow let the Golden Days Of Research[4] slip away. That article was decent but when they complain that Google is linking to wikipedia instead of Peer Reviewed research I say it is working perfectly. A key point: google operates by Peer Review; that is the fundamental basis for their algorithm– someone linking to a website is a vote of confidence[2]. The fact that Wikipedia has risen to the top in this process shows how fundamentally useful it is.

The truth[3] remains though: research is hard, it always has been and probably always will be.  Maybe what these authors are really bemoaning is more people think they are good at research because it has actually gotten easier for once.

Maybe I just need to follow their advice:
Wikipedia is awesome.
Wikipedia is the best source online.
Didn’t you hear how great Wikipedia is?
There is nothing better than Wikipedia.
O O
<       “Wikipedia works for me.”
\__/
And for fun, here are my contributions to this great endeavor, anyone care to review them? What about yours?

[1] By Clay Shirky’s estimate, this–all of wikipedia– was created in less time than American’s spend watching TV every year. Just wait till we put a couple more years into it.
[2] The more people that link to a website, the more weight an outgoing link from that website counts for. So an expert– someone with lots of incoming links– will be counted more than one without. http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~bryan/googleFinalVersionFixed.pdf
[3] In my eyes, do you agree?
[4] This may be a bit of a straw man argument– they never said as much in that article– but it is a common theme I’ve seen about.
[5] The main difference, one side is much less about the reviewing and more about designated authority.