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Pilot #3: The Wikipedia

Pilot #3: The Wikipedia

been able to get is the “victim of our own success” clip. Perhaps the traffic for

the Pilot shows has died down enough to restore this one?

If not, perhaps you could do a new show on the Wikipedia, it seems a shame

to have “used up” the topic on a show that was never/will never be aired.

Thanks.

Pilot #3: The Wikipedia

I love the idea of Wikipidea. It doesn’t have to take the place of the enclopedia. They can coexist. There is no such thing as unbiased writing, so it is unwise to trust something unequivocally just because it is published. And “authorities” have been plenty wrong throughout history.

People will or can misuse anything, as well as can plagiarize from any source.

The wikipedia is just one more source of info. The more the better.

By the way – i am a gal.

“I would prefer it if people responding to critics of Wikipedia would not devolve our points into assessments that people are inherently lazy, assume we are unfamiliar with Wikipedia, etc., but perhaps that’s hoping for too much… I don’t take it personally.”

First of all, I don’t assume you’re unfamiliar with Wikipedia. (Although, saying that the wiki has little to offer the “end-user” makes me wonder…) I was only saying that you _expect_ other people to be unfamiliar with Wikipedia, or rather, you _expect_ them not to be able or willing to take the small amount of time it takes to actually visit the site and discover what it is, how to use it, etc. This really only takes a few hours of time and the ability to read. Yet one of the most common complaints I hear about Wikipedia is that people will _misuse_ it. (By taking everything written there are gospel truth, not finding out the process by which articles are written, etc.) Because almost all of these “misuses” of Wikipedia people complain about would be fine, provided the user take the time to learn about the site and become an active (not passive) consumer of information. Now, to me, someone who doesn’t have the inclination or isn’t willing to put forth the small amount of effort to do this is inherently lazy. I have no problem calling a spade a spade. I can only conclude one of 2 things: either many people think it’s perfectly acceptable to be lazy, or else many people have a different definition of lazy than I do.

I am intrigued by the comment that “the nature of information has changed,” and will address that head-on in my post on Free Range Librarian, due out early this evening. I may also bring up the preoccupation with who does or does not earn income tending information resources.

I would prefer it if people responding to critics of Wikipedia would not devolve our points into assessments that people are inherently lazy, assume we are unfamiliar with Wikipedia, etc., but perhaps that’s hoping for too much… I don’t take it personally. Go ahead, call me a jackbooted gatekeeper, I can take it!

(By the way, anyone notice the gender imbalance in this debate? But please–don’t take that personally!)

What I did not like were Chris’ attempts to frame the discussion in philosophical or obscure terms. Semiotic Democracy? Universal Mind? Huh? Wikipedia may give philosophers lots of new and interesting things to blather on about, but what I care about is how Wikipedia affects the world that I live in, whether that be culturally, economically, politically, or otherwise. I wonder if this show’s guests would have had interesting answers if they had been asked how Wikipedia and its kind might affect the marketplace of ideas – not to mention the market for encyclopedias. (What with all this talk about publishing on DVD and in print.) Given that this show is all about “Open Source”, in retrospect, it seems a little surprising that no one really asked what the rapid growth of Wikipedia might say about this type of open-collaboration model. How does it relate to Open Source software collaboration? Did you know, for instance, that many open-source software projects are starting to use wikis as a programming, documentation, and user-assistance collaboration tool? What else might wikis be good for? Perhaps these questions will be fodder for future shows.

I also found it a little out of place that Chris was cheerleading a little for Wikipedia, by way of praising it. It’s not like I don’t agree that Wikipedia is a great idea; it’s just that it’s off-putting for the referee of a conversation to also be a participant in that way.