Zach Copley

I usually have no interest in Slate, the online magazine created by Microsoft and later sold to The Washington Post. The articles mostly contain mediocre analysis of whatever the editors deem to be the issues of the day. It’s sort of like an online Newsweek. And surprise, surprise, (probably I’m the last person to know this) a quick check at CJR shows The Washington Post also owns Newsweek. I consider Newsweek and Time essentially propaganda rags primarily designed to tell people what to think. But I’m digressing. Occasionally, everyone starts talking about some Slate article and it bubbles up to my attention. This time it’s a hit piece on WikiTravel, the free, online, community-authored travel guide.

The article is called, “Can Wiki Travel? Touring Thailand with only the Internet as my guide,” by Tim Wu — A pun, and a call to can Wikitravel, because Wu complains that relying on Wikitravel for advice for his last Thailand vacation was “very nearly a disaster.”

The bugs up his bum seem to boil down to this paragraph from the article:

My plan for this trip to Thailand was based on a somewhat corny vision: I wanted to climb a limestone cliff with my bare hands and look out at the ocean below, while pursuing a mind empty of stray thoughts. That meant I had three basic questions: Where can I find rock climbing in Thailand? What kind of people go there? And where can I stay? On all three questions, Wikitravel failed to deliver—in part because it’s still new but also because, ironically, Wikitravel fails to capitalize on the full potential of the Web.

He complains there’s not enough detail in Wikitravel. Specifically, he wants to know where to go to avoid “naked German package tourists.” Well, Wikitravel intends to be a travel guide to the entire planet, in every language. That level of detail is going to take some time to develop. Wikitravel has only been around for a few years.

At first it seems like he acknowledges that fact in the above paragraph from the article (“….Wikitravel failed to deliver—in part because it’s still new….”), but later he blames the user-generated content model itself.

But the more serious problem was accommodation listings. This may be the Achilles’ heel of Wikitravel’s all-volunteer model. It’s no fun visiting and ranking dozens of grimy hostels and boring hotels, especially when you’re on vacation. Consequently, listings were sparse.

Where’s the justification for that statement? Consequently, huh? I guess he took a big poll of Wikitravellers and found they’re all lazy bums. He also goes on and on about how his trip was saved by another online travel site that “unlike Wikitravel is a professionally written site.” He seems to be making the case that, really, travel guide writing should be left to the pros…

Hey, wait a sec. What else does CJR say The Washington Post owns? I’ll be! They own Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel, a major publisher of travel guides (“Travel Experts for 50 Years”), which, incidentally, has its own website for dispensing travel advice.

Okay, I’m going to assume Tim Wu simply wasn’t aware of that fact, considering he missed the boat on so many other things. Still, I think it’s the responsibility of the editors of Slate to disclose this kind of conflict of interest. Unfortunately, Slate seems to have the same brand of shoddy journalistic ethics as Newsweek.

Neutral vs. biased information

The other major complaint Wu has is Wikitravel tries to keep its travel information “fair,” meaning written from a neutral point of view (like Wikipedia), and therefore the advice is not dishy enough. He wants to know candid personal opinions and read about individuals’ travel experiences.

If Wikitravel contained that kind of commentary, along with real photos of places people have stayed, it would be twice as useful as it is today.

Here he has a point. Opinionated advice, anecdotes, photos, and travel journals are very useful. But he goes too far when he claims that biased advice is better, and Wikitravel’s articles are useless because they aren’t biased. There’s room for both neutral consensus content (how to get in, get around, what the major attractions are, what the local customs are, etc.) as well as individual opinion and experiences. In fact, the two types of information complement each other nicely.

If Wu had done a little more traveling around Wikitravel itself he might have noticed that the Wikitravellers are quite aware of the need for both kinds of information. There is a new adjunct to the main Wikitravel site called Extra (currently in public beta) for sharing opinions, pictures, travel stories, etc. It’s probably going to take awhile before there’s a lot of that Wu can use… stuff about Patong, Phuket being “[a] truly ugly tapestry of the surreal, debauched and depraved,” but that’s exactly the kind of thing Extra is for.

A gripe from me

However, I’m still not sure that Wu’s being completely up-front about his reasons for writing this article. He claims to be a true believer in the Wiki-style consensus content model.

As a confessed Wikipedia addict, sometime contributor, and true believer, I loved the idea.

Oh yeah, well if there’s not enough detail about Thailand, why don’t you fix it, Mr. Wu? Not enough hotel listings for you? How about adding the hotels you stayed in to Wikitravel’s Thailand entries? How do you expect Wikitravel to ever have more listings?

Update #1

Some readers of my blog have pointed out in order not to look like a hypocrite, I should disclose the fact that I’m good friends with the founders and operators of Wikitravel. Something that is obvious if you look at the rest of my blog, and why I didn’t explicitly state so in the first place. However, I have no financial stake in Wikitravel, or any ties to the company that owns Wikitravel, Internet Brands, Inc. My interest in Wikitravel’s success and my motives for defending it are based in my belief that it’s a worthwhile project. I use and contribute to it myself. Like Wikipedia, Wikitravel is a success story for the wiki-based open content model.

Update #2

I am a little bit surprised by the net’s response to Slate’s article. The amount of vitriol flung at Wikitravel seems unjustified to me. Most of the blog posts about it seem to fall into the me too category. I guess Slate is as good at shaping opinion as Newsweek. Or perhaps this is just another case of “No good deed goes unpunished” (a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable world-wide travel guide).