May 19, 2008...7:37 pm
Freezing Wikipedia
According to this news report, Wikipedia may “freeze” some of its encyclopedia entries that have been vetted by experts as a way to make faculty and students feel more comfortable about using the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This would allow for people to point to a specific article’s archived copy in a much easier manner than one can do presently since you really have to know the date and time of when you accessed an article currently. I think this is a good thing. One of the common objections of Wikipedia is that its instability is problematic for those who wish to use it and cite it. If you can point to a stable version that has been looked over by experts, I think a lot of people who have concerns about the accuracy, reliability, etc. will be more inclined to accept it as a valid and valuable resource.
So what do you think? If Wikipedia has articles that are frozen, archived, and easily accessible, will that make it a more valuable resource? Do you feel that professors/teachers, librarians, administrators, etc. would be more willing to accept its use than they do now? Do you think that this is simply an attempt by Jimmy Wales to make people feel more comfortable with his encyclopedia? i.e., Is this just a publicity stunt or do you think it actually might come to fruition and be useful? Why is it that every time something new happens on Wikipedia it seems the Germans are doing it first? (See this page for reference)
On a related note, this news report talks about how many professors are using Wikipedia as a teaching tool and/or a way to get students to improve the encyclopedia while still doing a research paper for class. I’m sure that this list on Wikipedia is not an all-encompassing list of schools that have taken part in such a project, but it gives you an idea of who is doing this and what they’re doing. I’m definitely in favor of people confronting this resource. I think that working with students and engaging them with this resource makes the research process much more exciting. As was reported:
Working online with anyone watching or editing “was really hard to get into,” said Eva Shiu, a third-year student who worked on the Marquez entry [Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book The General in His Labyrinth]. “But it was really exciting, and I feel like I’ve accomplished something,” she told AFP.
“I got addicted to it … I was up nights until three or four a.m. in the morning working on it.”
Monica Freudenreich, who worked on the Asturias entry [novel El Senor Presidente by Miguel Angel Asturias], said she liked the fact her contribution will survive online. Usually term papers “end up in a binder than eventually sits under my bed,” she wrote on Wikipedia.
I like the fact that professors are willing to try new things like this, and see if they work for students. I’m sure not all students have experiences like those are quoted above. Some may be frustrated by the fact that anyone can work on your entry, wrecking your finely written prose or dismissing an article as not worthy of inclusion. However, I think that this is a good experience not just in writing the entry, but also because some people are now using Wikis to collaborate on projects and this could be one way for people to get that experience that they may not get otherwise. Although the success of books like Bowling Alone may dispute this statement, I believe we’re becoming more entwined in the lives of people around the world. We may not be joining bowling leagues [the metaphor that is used for one's community involvement] like we once used to, but we are working on things with people in different countries on sites like Wikipedia, commenting on blogs from people we don’t know, socially networking with friends & relatives hundreds or thousands of miles away, and playing video games against someone sitting half a world away. I kind of got off on a tangent there, but I think that just because we once used to do one thing - be involved with people phsically close to us through community bowling leagues and the like - it doesn’t mean that doing something new - collaborating with others through web 2.0 tools like Wikipedia or playing video games online - is necessarily bad. Too much of one or the other is probably not good for us. So, get out of your lazy-boy and go bowling or for you bowlers out there, surf the net and join a social network and reunite with old friends.
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