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To be accurate, Wales did not invent the concept of the wiki. That honor went to Ward Cunningham, who came up with the technology and then used it on his company's Web site in the mid-1990s.
But it was the launch of Wikipedia in 2001 that proved the viability of a radical notion: a community of strangers could and would work together to safeguard the integrity of an open-source online encyclopedia.
"When I first did Wikipedia, I couldn't sleep at night," Wales said on a visit to CNET earlier this week. "I thought people would trash it."
They didn't. Outside of the occasional jerk, most folks were ready to contribute their knowledge and fact-check in a responsible, collaborative way. And today, Wikipedia houses more than 4.6 million articles in more than 100 languages.
We can debate the significance of so-called social-networking software. Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace.com may be the flavor of the month, but what about a decade from now? Wikipedia and its offshoots won't face that question. What with old-media and even new-media outfits forced to scramble to remain relevant because of accelerating technology shifts, the Wikinauts appear uniquely set to benefit from the open-source zeitgeist that informs the way that many, if not most, of us think about the collection and use of content.
If anything, the Wikipedification of the world is only in its infancy--and that's either potentially very good or very troubling. The answer depends upon where you're coming from.
Clearly, Wales and his colleagues have tapped into the spirit of the times. They have since pushed into related areas, such as wiki-based Internet search technology and community Web sites. Opening up its pages to one and all, the Wiki approach is profoundly democratic.
Wales and his confederates have a model that scales nicely. So nicely, in fact, that there's little to stop them from creating the equivalent of an Internet magazine rack with contributed news and opinions.
More power to them. You have to love the potential of a platform that promotes more diversity. But still, I have lingering doubts about the outcome.
Specifically, I worry about the inevitable trade-offs that define life on the Internet. Will quality take a backseat to superficiality? You see this all the time in the blogosphere.
I've accumulated my A list of favorite blogs over the years. But I first had to dodge all the half-baked, ungrammatical blowhards who contribute much of the noise that passes for informed comment on the Internet.
Can an open-source zine rise to the level of excellence found in proven publications like Sports Illustrated? Perhaps, but nobody yet knows the answer. The early evidence suggests that it's going to be a long haul.
The sloppy observations of an armchair sports fan fail to even remotely come close to the delicious insights of a pro like Frank Deford.
I can hear the catcalls already. "Elitist!" OK, I plead guilty--but with an explanation. Everyone is entitled to a voice, but that doesn't mean that all voices are equal. The fun is in striving to reach the top. The danger is that we'll instead remain satisfied with mediocrity.
Biography
Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
See more CNET content tagged:
Jimmy Wales,
Wikipedia,
Sports Illustrated,
Wiki,
open source
It seems Mr Cooper has some personal generalized angst about this piece of new media and how it changes the world, which I sympathise with having felt similiarly myself on occasion. But that's hardly enough to base a column on. More thinking through wanted, Mr. Cooper !
I personally think it is a great one, that has proven very useful to
me. What we will need in the future, however, is a standard for
authority (or reputation) management, so that any data element
can be tied to an author who itself can be related to a taxonomy
(or even better, ontology) of authoritative sources. Then, each
individual can decide what individuals, organizations (e.g.
Stanford University), or groups of organizations (e.g. Catholic
organizations) he wishes to trust in this ontology, and with what
level of confidence. Let's face it, :::drumroll::: there is no single
truth, no single way to look at the universe. But each individual
can decide what is his own truth.
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Mff23hgidqmHGqbcv.lfskakEtS6qLVHUEMFUG4-?cq=1&p=81
I continue to believe that really smart editors are just as important to "content generation" as "really smart people" (to quote Jimmy Wales). I was delighted that German Wikipedia was going to test this proposition, but I am still waiting to see the results. (Then we can start to argue about the authority of editors!)
On the other hand, this is a lot like the stories here about SL griefers, protests and the lot. It is the same fun reading that as reading a badly written high school review of the Pirates of Penzance. I mean, Mr. Cooper, did you take disco this seriously?
That is what all social networks come down to: the masses amassing and numbers derived from that soar straight to 'average' or 'mediocre' when taken in total. That is why the whole 'wisdom of crowds' thing is silly on the face of it. Sure, it gets an average number. Ever worked for a company managed by MBAs doing 'averaging' to determine qualifications for employment, benefits, etc.? Qui bono? They do. The customer on the other hand gets a mediocre average product. That is the Spy Vs Spy of technology companies in America today: they produced mediocrity because they can't afford to compete, so they accept 'average' and glorify it. But that is also what we can afford to buy at Wal-Mart once the MBAs take their cut and the middle class takes the leftovers.
"Oh it IS a glorious thing to be the Pirate KING!"
The problem is that it can be very difficult to write about anything important without mixing opinion into the facts. Also, some facts are not agreed upon. For example, either a) God exists, or b) God does not exist. One of those statements is true, and the other is false. There is no getting around it. Either theists are wrong or atheists are wrong. Certainly we can, and should, agree to get along with each other, even if we disagree on important issues. But it is utter nonsense to say, "It's just an opinion; everyone has his own truth," as if we were talking about whether Coke or Pepsi tastes better.
Getting back to Wikipedia, another problem is that it is impossible to include ALL of the relevant facts in any article. Indeed, people with different opinions probably wouldn't even agree on which facts were relevant. So even if an article tries extremely hard to present only facts, opinions can still come through in the fact selection process.
Therefore, I like the Wikipedia system. If an article is too slanted (either by presenting opinions as facts, or by presenting disputed facts as agreed facts, or by selectively presenting only facts favorable to an opinion), many people will recognize it and point out needed corrections. Wikipedia's guidelines for authors should be required weekly reading for every journalist, scientist, teacher, and government official.
true or false, but there are other systems of logic where a
statement can be simultaneously true and false, or neither true nor
false. Ironically, the example being used ("G.d exists" or "G.d does
not exist") overlooks the fact that G.d, by "definition" (even though
there is no such thing), can both exist and not exist at the same
time, by virtue of divine prerogative. So let us not limit universal
logical thinking to mere Boolean truth tables.
Several technical reviews of the articles contained in the site have determined that the accuracy is as good as some of the top scientific journals.
But, the real strength is the breadth and timeliness of the information. I don't care how 'perfect' an article is, if it doesn't come out until a year after the actual subject matter.
When the big knowledge companies went online, they did an excellent job of moving their existing knowledge into the medium, but the pace of new additions was glacial compared to what was happening in the real world, especially in the technical arena.
I agree some people are better at expressing themselves both verbally and in the written word, and there will always be venues for these folks, but that does not mean the one voice or opinion is better than another, just expressed in a more palatable fashion.