I just feel this new development around “sharing to world’s knowledge” is very important!
If we are to believe Larry Sanger, the man that came up with the original idea of Wikipedia, and the man behind the new initiative, the Citizendium will be the wiki it was supposed to be in the first place. The current Wikipedia, Sanger explains, “is only half of the original conception of the finest encyclopedia in the history of humankind: the wild-and-woolly half…
While the new project launches a great number of changes to the internal structure of the wiki, the most important one is the new power of “invited expert editors”.
If the new Citizendium project is a success, we will probably end up with a small part of Wikipedia content getting the “experts approved stamp”, while for the newer stuff and not-interesting-for-experts stuff (I guess this is the majority) we will still have the real community based content.
My conclusion: although I am not an expert in Wikipedia’s inner workings, I welcome every effort to get the world’s real experts (academia and the like) involved in a project like this. I just hope it works out this way.
Some links:
No news from Jimmy Wales yet…
Technorati tag(s): Wikipedia, Citizendium
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posted Sep 18, 10:26 pm on Sep 18, 2006 |
category: Wikipedia
/ Knowledge Management
My almost daily reference guide, Wikipedia the World’s Encyclopedia, has turned 5 years old. From its own description:
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. Wikipedia has more than 3,100,000 articles, including more than 921,200 in the English-language version, and as of January 2006 it has more than 795,100 registered users.
There is also a Dutch version carrying around 120.000 articles at this moment.
Personally I am yet to “give” my knowledge to humanity, having “taken” already on numerous occasions.
A good start might be, next to Wikipedia itself, Steve Rubel’s blog posts on the subject: 10 Wikipedia hacks and 10 more Wikipedia hacks.
What fascinates me most about Wikipedia is that there is a core group of people (thousands!) really dedicated to increase the captured knowledge and to keep it up-to-date and unharmed. What is the motivation of these people? Where do they find the time? What is their reward? I can only think of a few:
- altruism (some people really want to do good or “give back”)
- recognition (is there a grading / reputation system in Wikipedia?)
- being part of the Wikipedia community
Last year Wired ran a nice article quoting some Wikipedians, but unfortunately the article remained a bit shallow on the motivation part.
Well, we do not live (yet) in a world in which the number of one’s Wikipedia entries would be of equal importance to one’s annual earnings. But that may come! Should Wikipedian’s pay less tax?
Ok, so now I only have to find some time for this. But wait: hey Dad, is this something for you to participate in?
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[1] | posted Jan 16, 11:01 pm on Jan 16, 2006 |
category: Wikipedia
/ Wiki
