What is wikipistemology?

Abstract

The key term of the article has recently appeared in the social-philosophical and epistemological literature in order to expresses a generalization of two key concepts of the problem: Wikipedia and epistemology. Speaking of Wikipedia as an object of scientific interest it is more often to rank it with encyclopedias, which served as a means of translation of scientific knowledge. However, the epistemological status of Wikipedia is not equal to the status of encyclopedias, and the rationalization of this statement is the purpose of this work. The author analyzes Wikipedia at first as an encyclopedia, and then, taking into account the characteristics, as an independent object. More recently, the very idea of comparing the epistemic cultures of the scientific community and Wikipedia, as well as the idea of a specific epistemic culture of Wikipedia, would cause many contradictions. In this regard the study reveals the possibility of at least two new dimensions of Wikipedia: as a source of knowledge about the objects of interest and as a source of knowledge about the information compromise of modern society. The conclusion provides the discussion about wiki-projects as the reason of significantly changes of epistemic practices in the information society