On Twitter a few months ago, Anne Marie Cunningham mentioned an academic paper she had read, which referenced the theory of the Four Stages of Competence. This is a model of learning widely used in medical and business pedagogy, but the paper talked about a fifth stage of the theory, and referenced Wikipedia for this. However, the Wikipedia article it referenced had no mention of the fifth stage at the time she accessed it. Because of this, a few of us on Twitter started looking a little further.
We found that the mention of the fifth stage was there, but had been removed. We also found that the theory is often attributed to Abraham Maslow, but it seems that there is no citable material on the Internet to support this, and it is not in his main works in any case. However, there were some decent references linking the theory to Noel Burch, a former employee of a Gordon Training International, a human relations training organisation of San Diego County, California. I attributed the theory to Burch and the organisation on Wikipedia. After doing so, I had hoped to expand the Wikipedia article, and did slightly. But it is still a stub, and there was very little in the way of citable material on the Internet that I could use to support any more writing. The little material there was tended to mention that other authors besides Burch and GTI had added a fifth stage of some kind, so I added the section back in.
The Dynamic Reference
By adding it back in, did I not make the academic paper more valid? It is an intriguing thought, and one that belongs to the wiki age, but perhaps to no age before it. Obviously, any reference is only to the Wikipedia page as it was at the time it was read. That is why we put dates of access. But that is not how Wikipedia is used: it is constantly changing, and only the most responsible and oddest of people would trawl through past edits, and regard them as wholly valid, while discounting the current and presumably most evolved version of the page.
The academic paper was certainly lacking when following its references lead to a dead end, so in a sense, I did improve that paper, while of course being nothing to do with it. If people keep referencing Wikipedia, it therefore raises a mildly thrilling prospect in academia. The community could improve an article written by someone, just by improving the quality of the material it cites.
Cite Uncite
Not long afterwards, though, I found that a Wikipedian, Gti123, had removed the reference to the fifth stage again. I looked at Gti123's edit history, and found that they had only edited articles about Gordon Training International, or Dr Thomas Gordon, its founder. I posted a message to the user talk page explaining why I felt the fifth stage should stay, which was because I felt it had encyclopaedic value. The section on the fifth stage has since remained. Recently, on Gti123's talk page, the user said that, as I suspected, they were from Gordon Training International, and that the account was operated by Linda Adams, President and CEO, whose late husband is Thomas Gordon. I can see from her website that she is a well-trained social scientist who, along with her daughter, continues her husband's work with dedication.
It is clear that Ms Adams was performing a good service by trying to increase the amount and accuracy of information online. Of course, she knows more about GTI and its learning model that anyone else does, and is to be lauded for trying to make that information public. Indeed, she mentioned that she had been in touch with the late Noel Burch by email on this particular matter.
Certainly, though, I had a wider idea of what is germane to an encyclopaedia article. I see it as a place to include any knowledge that is relevant to the topic, as long as it is referenced to clear, verifiable, external sources, and its inclusion is in proportion to the rest of the article. The article on Karl Popper's theory of falsifiability, for example, does not just expound Popper's doctrine. It discusses it, mentions its development by others, puts it is its historical context, and explains critisisms of it. That is what makes it an encylcopaedia article, with a neutral point of view: it can widen the focus, and live up to the etymology of "encyclopaedia".
Once a theory is published - once it is "out" - its author has the right that it be attributed to them. I am glad that this theory is now attributed to Noel Burch and Gordon Training International. But they lose some ownership of it: they will find it discussed, developed, refined or abused. That is the nature of the community of ideas. There is going to be all the more wrangling over the narrative that structures and defines an idea in the wiki age. The Wikipedia article on anything is, to many people, a sort of "front page" for the subject itself, and we see only one of them unless we care to investigate previous edits.
Futher Information
In the famous Rembrandt painting, An Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, we see the essence of medical education: the students are learning from the open textbook, the open cadaver, and Dr Tulp himself. The book relies on its author, the book relies on the real facts of the anatomy, the student relies on the book and the teacher, and the teacher relies on everything. Everything is reflexive, but everything is stable.
To move away from Gordon Training International, whose motives were unquestionably good, this affair raises a disquieting notion. Of course, any paper could be totally deracinated by having the material it references removed from wikis. That is what happened briefly to the academic paper. It was done unwittingly. But if the material an academic paper references is labile, then something more sinister could happen that its simply disappearing. A reference could be subtly modified, or subtly brought into line, so that the paper's contention loses its validity in degree or in part. I do not think that this is a reason to stop using collaborative sources in science, because it is an ineluctable fact that Wikipedia is, for many people, the "front page" for any idea. But it is a reason for caution and vigilance.
