Wikipedia is another of the many web-based resources that have already changed the world. For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know I believe strongly that Thomas Friedman's views of education and the future are critical to the success of the United States in Friedman's flat world. Wikipedia has extremely thorough postings on Mr. Friedman here and The World is Flat here.
Note: Wikipedia's parent, the Wikimedia Foundation has posted over 12,000 free collaborative textbooks.
_________________________________________Wikipedia -- As defined by Wikipedia:
Wikipedia is a multilingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing articles to be added or changed by anyone with an internet connection. The project began on January 15, 2001 as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia, and is now operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. The English-language version of Wikipedia
currently has more than 835,000 articles. Wikipedia has steadily risen in popularity,[1] and has spawned several sister projects, such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. Wikipedia is widely considered as the alternative to commercial encyclopedias.
Articles in the Wikipedia are regularly cited by the mass media and academia, who generally praise it for its free distribution, editing, and diverse range of coverage. Editors are encouraged to uphold a policy of "neutral point of view" under which notable perspectives are summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth. But Wikipedia's status as a reference work has been controversial. Its open nature allows vandalism, inaccuracy, and opinion. It has also been criticised for systemic bias, preference of consensus to credentials, and a perceived lack of accountability and authority when compared with traditional encyclopedias.
There are about 200 language editions of Wikipedia (about 100 of which are active). Ten editions have more than 50,000 articles each: English, German, French, Japanese, Polish, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish. Its German-language edition has been distributed on compact discs, and many of its other editions are mirrored or have been forked by websites.
During a discussion, someone basically said wikipedia wasn't so reliable or good as people could go in and edit the text.
I said I could show here all kinds of errors in published books, contained there for a variety of reasons. Both published allegedly documented sources and wikipedia have can have bad information and both can have good information.
As an example I said the learned people of old though "the world was flat" and likely the books of the day said so somewhere.
I said that likely wikipedia had something on the subject, so entered "wikipedia, the world is flat" and your website, among others popped up.
Thank you for your work on this interesting site.
Due to the holidays, I did not have time to investigate all the links but perhaps another time.
I stand on the side that Wikipedia can be used as a reference, but that like everything in life, with an understanding of how the site works.
The person I was disagreeing with, later said they use wikipedia, then corroborate information they need with other sources.
On the other hand, I know bias can ensure misleading information. Los Angeles, CA wants all the surrounding areas to fall under its veil, but the Inland Empire, which includes Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, CA. One or more websites have listed the Inland Empire Counties as a subset of Los Angeles, or a suburb of L.A., which I disagree with. The European portion of IE goes back quite a long way and the IE was a big deal with lots of money etc.
Anyway I digress. Thanks again for your blog on Wikipedia and The World is Flat, etc.
Posted by: twodogkd | Monday, December 24, 2007 at 12:44 AM