What is Wikipedia?
http://live.pirillo.com/ – Back in ancient times there was a thing called an "encyclopedia" – it was a disgusting piece of technology that used tree pulp and ink to store information. The so-called "paper" was bound in volumes – about 26 or 27 of them – which contained information on every word, noun, and proper noun known to exist at that time.
Using this technology was slow, painful, and often outdated – the volumes needed to be updated in bulk since they did not have the ability to be updated dynamically. You also needed to buy this information! Costing upwards of $2000 for the entire set, salesmen would actually encourage people to purchase an encyclopedia set once a year!
Thankfully, we live in modern times where we have Wikipedia. Wikipedia is, essentially, the anti-encyclopedia. It contains most of the same information of encyclopedias plus information you generally would not be able to find. Plus, it’s updated on-demand.
Some professors don’t approve of Wikipedia – they claim it’s not a reliable resource. To that point, they may be right: anyone can edit Wikipedia, which can lead to inaccuracies; however, Wikipedia can be a great resource for starting any research project and pointing you in a good direction.
Should you use Wikipedia as your only resource? No, you need multiple resources to try and come close to understanding what the truth is behind a situation.
Should you ignore Wikipedia? Absolutely not! It’s a great resource that provides a ton of value – free of charge – for anyone who is researching any topic.
What do you think?
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2 Comments
Michael Levin
August 19th, 2007
at 5:49am
Brion Vibber, Wikipedia software architect, talks about Wikipedia on this Swampcast interview: http://jroller.com/page/Sandymountster/?anchor=swampcast_and_wikipedia_s_architect
Brion will give a talk for http://www.gatorjug.org on Sept 12th in Gainesville, FL and on Sept 27th at http://www.orlandojug.com on Sept 27th.
I enjoyed talking with Brion and was amazed by just how far LAMP architecture will go! That’s Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Als, did you knw that Wikipedia encourages (not discourages!) downloading all its data for your own use?
This is what Web2.0 is all about: websites that grow over time through user involvement. I love it! It’s such a great time to be a geek.
Michael
April 4th, 2008
at 1:04pm
Ok. I had to comment. Nothing gets me going like a comment “Truth is relative”. By saying that you have made a absolute statement, thus Truth is not relative. There is no need to study math or science if you can not abide by an absolute truth.
The concern here is that any troll can come along and manipulate wikipedia that is not an expert in that field. That is truth. However, it is also true that experts in many fields keep tabs on the wikipedia to help preserve the integrity of wikipedia. That is truth.
The issue lies in the middle. Is wikipedia valuable enough to give as a reference, ALONG with books on the subject? I would say yes. And here is why? Just because a book is written on a subject mean that the person is knowledgeable enough to be treated as a scholar on that subject. Wikipedia is one of many resources that should be allowed in school.
And it has nothing to do with “truth being relative”, because truth isn’t. And that is truth.