When I first heard about Wikipedia I was extremely skeptical. How can a technology open to everyone no matter his or her credentials (or intent) produce a viable encyclopedia populated with reliable information? Why should I be confident of a wiki's reliability when there is no expert oversight?This article from The New York Times (Wikipedia: Exploring Fact City) is an insightful analysis of why Wikipedia works as well as it does. It likens the website to a city where people implicitly agree to live and work together for the benefit of all. Like a city, the freedom and good faith of hundreds of thousands of "citizens" makes it a dynamic and interesting source of information in ways that an expert site never could be. The analogy of Wikipedia as a dynamic and interesting urban environment is wonderful food for thought.
For the first time I have been able to understand why an enyclopedia that does not rely on experts can be a reliable source of information. In fact, the article points out that the lack of expert oversight is actually wiki's strength; and it applauds Wikipedia for having resisted the call for expert oversight throughout its existence.
I highly recommend this article to anyone who, like me, has wondered why Wikipedia (or New York City for that matter!) works when arguably it shouldn't.
Thank you for sharing this article!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate what you have to say and you made such great comments but one of my children was looking up information last month on Joba Chamberlain and the first website that was listed by the Google search was from Wikipedia.Joba Chamberlain was called a very vulgar word that remained unchecked for two days. My son is in high school, but I cannot imagine what would have been the reaction of a younger student. There was a hyperlink from the vulgar word to a slang dictionary so if one did not understand - you were made completely aware. This lasted for two days and then was removed. Wikipedia is a source but is not supported by any of the professors at SPC when doing a research document.
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