As you might guess, I didn’t single out Wikipedia in my critique, but discussed things like peer-review, credentials, documentation of edits, biased tone (which yes, CAN appear in works by experts!) and the reasons WHY we talk about these things with students. I didn’t get the job, thank goodness. I’m really about keeping the discussions more “meta” than picking on a single tool or source. I just wish I had had this essay to quote in my discussion (yes, I do believe it is appropriate to quote respected bloggers, especially when they have also published “traditionally”). I will be tagging this post “information_literacy” in my del.icio.us.

Thank you, and thank you for the time and thoughtfulness you regularly put into these essays.

@Joshua: yup, that’s the feeling sometimes I get, too.

Amen! Thanks so much for this post.

Many bloggers in the past few days have been writing about Michael Gorman’s two recent pieces on the Encyclopedia Britannica blog (Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part I and Part II). In these two rather incoherent posts, Gorman, who is perhaps bes…

The line they excerpt for their post title, “everyone’s tripping and it’s all free” was one of my favorites.

However, the Goldhagen incident was perhaps not the best example. (I don’t know all the facts of the case, so I will respect your authority and assume you are representing it fairly!) Yes, it proves that experts make mistakes and use sloppy methodology. But how was the mistake corrected? Not by people on the Internet merely questioning authority. And certainly not by amateurs on Wikipedia. (Yes, I know that’s not what you’re arguing, but some take the anti-expert mentality to extremes.)

The mistake was corrected by trained historians painstakingly going through the available evidence.

Questioning authority is a good thing, but if that’s all you do, you’ll become a cynic who believes/trusts/knows nothing.

Critical thinking is better. For most of us, in most subject areas, that’s as far as we can go. I don’t know — for sure — how the war in Iraq is going. All I can do is listen to people who have been there (reporters, military, maybe some politicians who get good intelligence — if there is such as thing), consider what axes they have to grind, and decide for myself what to believe.

Best of all is the trained person examining the evidence using sound methodology. Most of us don’t have the time, the opportunity, or the training to do that ourselves. We should have a measure of respect for those who do, but never leave your critical thinking skills at home.

(Don’t sell yourself short. I think there’s a reason people wanted to take your class and your publisher wanted to publish your book. Yes, people learned from the students, but I’ll bet your name on the class really sold it. You’re known as someone who’s thought a lot about social software in libraries, used it, written about it. I’m sorry to say it, but I think that makes you an expert. No, we don’t think you have “all the answers,” but a lot of people respect your authority on this subject, because you’ve earned it.)