Is Wikipedia a scholastically rigorous source of information? Despite their initial sense of distrust for anonymous publications which require little effort (more the equivalent of graffiti than of the printed book), many people second-guess their opinion. Wikipedia has begun to annotate itself and copious footnotes claim the parentage of respectable and scholarly works.

Does this mean that Wikipedia is soaking in the wisdom of centuries of thought, and becoming the equivalent of the library? No.

Every compilation of facts reflects the biases of the compiler, whether or not he is aware of it. He is constantly making decisions about what is important enough to be included. A military historian, for instance, would record completely different facts about Laura Secord than, say, a feminist would. Again, an American historian and a Canadian historian would have different perspectives. None of the above would be lying, but each would be telling a different aspect of the truth, and only God knows the whole story.

So, who is compiling Wikipedia? What is being presented, and what neglected? First of all, we can examine the objective requirements for editors: they must have a computer, and internet access. They must understand technology. They must have spare time (which I, personally, find suspicious in itself) and the will to spread the knowledge they have. One can then expect a greater proportion of younger people, who have grown up with computers and understand them. These editors are also rich people, at least when put in global perspective: like I said, I’ve lived in Honduras, and believe me, the people there didn’t scrape together their lempiras to go to the internet cafe and update Wikipedia’s entry on Managua. The editors also have the laudable desire to teach others – or the less laudable desire to defend and rationalize their opinions.

Quite in line with these expectations, one can often find the influence of the university in Wikipedia articles, as well as the otaku atmosphere. There is often more discussion about a person’s sexual orientation than about their spiritual convictions – regardless of what may have been more important to the person discussed. Political correctness veils vicious debate, often (as is usual with debate) when people are trying to justify their own actions and beliefs. And there are people who make mistakes.

Is this bias applicable to all of history? Many claim that only rich old men were recorded for posterity, and that today’s standards are much more democratic. Since we still have the words of Aesop, a slave, and Diotima, a woman, as well as the thousands of authors and poets who died penniless, it’s hard to favour such an opinion. (Indeed, the Church through history has welcomed women into publication: St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Hildegard, St. Birgitta, etc.) Perhaps we could say that the difficulty in being published was such that only someone who had something to say, and some skill with which to say it, would be preserved for future generations.

So, ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Wikipedia gets 34,000 hits for “anime,” and only 19,500 for “Catholicism.” Balance and perspective are necessary, when one is anthologizing information.