Friday, March 18, 2011

The power of the wiki

Will Richardson (2010) says "if you want to find the most important site on the Web these days, look no further than Wikipedia.org." That's a pretty bold statement. Of all the gazillion websites available out there, he picks an encyclopedia. But I think he is right. He quotes Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." As of today, Wikipedia has over 3.5 million articles, and growing every day. Try putting that encyclopedia on your bookshelf! It is an amazing collaboration of individuals from around the world, creating this enormous, constantly updating and growing collection of information about everything. And it's all free (well, they do ask for donations occasionally).
Here is a great story by Richardson: Just after Christmas 2004, an earthquake struck in the Indian Ocean and created the tsunami that killed more than 175,000 people. "It may have happened over five years ago now, but it was without question the event that made clear to me that we were living in a much different information world as I turned to Wikipedia to watch the event unfold. The earthquake occurred just after midnight (GMT) on December 26, and the first 76-word post was created at Wikipedia about nine hours later. 24 hours after the first mention, the entry had been edited more than 400 times and had grown to about 3,000 words, complete with some of the first photographs of the devastation, a chart documenting the dead and injured, and other graphics describing how the tsunami was spawned. 48 hours after the first post, the entry had grown to more than 6,500 words, had been edited 1,200 times, and contained more than a dozen graphics including video of the wave itself. Six months after the event, more than 7,000 changes had been recorded, and the post settled at around 7,200 words. All of it had been created and re-created by people just like you and me who were interested in contributing what they were finding to the entry. It was without question the most comprehensive resource on the Web about that horrific event. And that process is being repeated over and over as news happens around us. Wikipedia is the poster child for the collaborative construction of knowledge and truth that the new, interactive Web facilitates. It is one of the main reasons I believe in the transformative potential of all of these technologies. No one person, or even small group of people, could produce Wikipedia, as currently edits appear at a rate of around 400,000 a day. Every day, thousands of people who have no connection to one another engage in the purposeful work of negotiating and creating truth. They do this with no expectation that their contributions will be in some way acknowledged or compensated, and they do it with the understanding that what they contribute can be freely edited or modified or reused by anyone else for any purpose. The extent to which this happens and to which it is successful is truly inspiring."
But wait, there's more.
The success of Wikipedia has spawned a wiki revolution. There are now wikis for about any subject you can think of. These are sponsored by the foundation behind Wikipedia: Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki.
Check it.

No comments:

Post a Comment