Textbook Authorship

Wiki Textbooks 3

How Will We Know What to Accept as True?

I suppose we can have confidence in the currency and accuracy of information in students' wikitexts to the extent that instructors serve as the final arbiters--and to the extent that the instructors themselves are credible as authorities in the subject. In this context a wiki textbook is a hermetic product, no different, really, from the unique pedagogical dynamics of the classroom in which a particular instructor and his or her students perform their rituals and epiphanies. But what about online textbooks produced this way that are thrown out to the world? What is the authorship? Can we have confidence that the content is correct and that the ethics of authorship are observed?

Conventionally, authors and publishers of textbooks are authoritative, identified, and accountable for documented content that is periodically revised. In a public wiki document, however, authors are anybody and content constantly changes. What is true one moment may be swept away the next--by anyone. What is seen as politically incorrect or unfavorable to any particular entity (such as a group or government or corporation) can be cleansed--anonymously, repeatedly. Vandalism and deliberate misinformation are commonplace. Content is supposed to be self-correcting, as self-appointed experts police entries until the truth is fleetingly achieved consensually.

There is a demonstration site by Jon Udell--very effective--that shows changes to a wikipedia entry over time using the electronic equivalent of time-lapse photography with voiceover. It shows the progressive development and correction of information about the use of umlauts in the names of heavy metal bands (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html). The demo shows how corrupt entries are removed within seconds of appearing, how accuracy is continually honed through word substitutions, and how organization is gradually imposed on information after it appears--a breathtaking view of bottom-up processing at work. I think the demo is intended to inspire confidence in wikis as reliable sources of information, filtered as they are through a meta leveling mechanism: the online general public, which collectively knows what truth it wants.

I am not inspired to confidence, however. It scares me to death. The online general public has decided that we should learn and care about heavy metal bands and why they use umlauts in their names. The online general public also has decided that "Hitler-like," "Nazi-inspired" and "skinhead-related" are all too strong to explain the typographic preference for umlauts. They have decided on "Germanic" and "Gothic" but cite no etymologies, primary sources, or theories that might enlighten us on the first use of the umlaut in a band name and why it inspired such a raft of imitators. Is this truth as trivia? Democracy as tyranny?

Labels: academic writing, college textbooks, online textbooks, textbook writing, Wikis

posted by Mary Ellen Lepionka @ 8:30 AM