wikipedia
I posted the following to oz-teachers in response to criticisms of wikipedia and the internet as a reliable information source
wikipedia has been criticised here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1599116,00.html
or http://tinyurl.com/d7d2e
My reading of that article is that the wikipedia entries are not perfect but also in most cases fairly reliable
Wikipedia is free and convenient - how many of us actually are ready to buy the latest Britannica, how many of us have access to a comprehensive library 24 hours a day?
There is a broader issue involved here too - the explosion of knowledge, cost and the future of the categorisation of information
Wikipedia is a very worthwhile experiment in developing a free peer to peer electronic encyclopedia - many said it was impossible but it is successful and becoming more so every day
Professional librarians have superior knowledge retrieval and categorisation skills - they are an essential but expensive resource
But because of the cost factors and knowledge explosion the professional librarian approach is not going to work on the internet
The comments in this thread along the lines that the internet is a pile of uninformed and opinionated junk of course are partly true but that is only relevant if there are not good ways available on the internet to search for reliable information of significance to the searcher
The truth of the matter is that internet technology (search, RSS feeds, bottom up taxonomies, group blogs of experts etc.) has dramatically improved the ability of the informed user to extract quality information from the internet - it really doesn't matter if it's 99% junk if you know how to find the 1% gold - and the technology to achieve this is improving all the time
It's a good idea to support really promising experiments like wikipedia because things like that are showing us one way forward about how to categorise reliable information in the new digital media which is in the process of replacing the old print media
wikipedia has been criticised here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2
or http://tinyurl.com/d7d2e
My reading of that article is that the wikipedia entries are not perfect but also in most cases fairly reliable
Wikipedia is free and convenient - how many of us actually are ready to buy the latest Britannica, how many of us have access to a comprehensive library 24 hours a day?
There is a broader issue involved here too - the explosion of knowledge, cost and the future of the categorisation of information
Wikipedia is a very worthwhile experiment in developing a free peer to peer electronic encyclopedia - many said it was impossible but it is successful and becoming more so every day
Professional librarians have superior knowledge retrieval and categorisation skills - they are an essential but expensive resource
But because of the cost factors and knowledge explosion the professional librarian approach is not going to work on the internet
The comments in this thread along the lines that the internet is a pile of uninformed and opinionated junk of course are partly true but that is only relevant if there are not good ways available on the internet to search for reliable information of significance to the searcher
The truth of the matter is that internet technology (search, RSS feeds, bottom up taxonomies, group blogs of experts etc.) has dramatically improved the ability of the informed user to extract quality information from the internet - it really doesn't matter if it's 99% junk if you know how to find the 1% gold - and the technology to achieve this is improving all the time
It's a good idea to support really promising experiments like wikipedia because things like that are showing us one way forward about how to categorise reliable information in the new digital media which is in the process of replacing the old print media
posted by Bill Kerr at 8:48 PM
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1 Comments:
Thank you Bill
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