Key
facts:
Wikipedia created in early 2001 by Larry Sanger, Ph.D., Philosophy, and
Jimmy Wales, CEO of Bomis, San Diego search engine company
"Collaborative project to produce a complete encyclopedia from scratch"
using a simple software tool called Wiki.
Attracts more than 1,000 new entries each month; 24,000 articles in its
database. Codifying human knowledge one entry at a time. (Memex?)
So
what?:
Each and every article and listing is a work in progress. See a typo, fix it.
Operates similarly to our email discussions, at least in terms of collaboration,
egalitarianism, accrued knowledge. Each entry has its own revision history,
enabling all to see changes made. Goal: "articles written and rewritten
and polished so many times that they will be models of clarity, neutrality,
and usefulness," says co-founder Larry Sanger. And all hyperlinked for
a V. Bush-ian trails-of-knowledge approach.
"What they have accomplished suggests that the Web can be a fertile environment
in which people work side by side and get along with one another." --Myers
So what? II:
Cranks and saboteurs (so far) are overwhelmed by revisers, of which there are
thousands. Jokers get jammed. Borrowing from the open source movement, "given
enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." And from the site itself, "We
constantly clean up after each other. And all is well with the world."
How nice.
Problems:
As you might expect, very strong in popular culture (check the listing for Elvis),
less so in classics; somewhat techno-intelligentsia-centric, also as expected
with an interactive encyclopedia existing wholly on the Web
What's
a Wiki:
"Wiki is kind of like a discussion group that is continuously constructing its
own FAQ," said Ward Cunningham, a software consultant in Portland, Ore., who
developed Wiki (named for the Hawaiian word wikiwiki, which means fast) in 1994.
(--Myers)
Sources:
--Steven
Johnson (Jan.
6, 2002),
"Populist
Editing," New
York Times.
--Peter
Myers (Sept. 20, 2001), "Fact-driven? Collegial? This site wants you,"
New York Times, pD2.
--Larry
Sanger, "How a Giant, Free Encyclopedia Might Transform Learning,"
posting at advogato.com, Monday, November 19 2001 (accessed March 10, 2002).
