The Collective Knowledge of Mankind…
June 28th, 2008Haven’t posted for a long time and to finally post on a non-comic related thread is probably silly, but…I’m about half way through my PhD and I just got into a ‘discussion’ about Wiki, which I wanted to post somewhere else as I’ve had to say this numerous times…personally, I love Wikipedia and believe this is the future we’ve been waiting for…
Opponents of Wikipedia (which I don’t understand why people complain, but I guess it’s in our nature) complain about the inaccuracies of the information. Statistically it has been ‘proven’ to be at LEAST as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica:
http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica
So errors must either come from human error, and well it IS human error and it will be found everywhere (yes even in the revered Encyclopedia)…or it comes from the fear of Wikipedia being fed erroneous information from saboteurs and ‘those wild teenagers’. Wikipedia does have moderators and guardians which try to prevent sabotage and wrong information and I believe between people wanting to do the right thing, and protecting it when others don’t want the right thing, the information will be statistically accurate within a couple percentage points (which historically it has been)…what I find fascinating about Wikipedia is that it breaks down, what could be, the final gatekeeper of the haves and have-nots. A person was born into royalty and it was impossible to ‘enter the elite circle’…a shift came when individuals collected wealth because soon they achieved power…another shift has happened in the 21st century where information has become a currency nearly as powerful as money because knowledge is power (a cliche, but so very true). Many people have not accepted this fully yet, but I worry that the ‘old gatekeepers’ of knowledge believe that there is a portion of the population who aren’t qualified to add to humanity’s collective pool of knowledge, as they are uneducated or unqualified.
“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”
There are people who have unique access to knowledge and information simply because they are at the ‘right spot at the right time’ to know something that others don’t. Case in point (albeit a sad one):
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Death_of_Nancy_Benoit_rumour_posted_on_Wikipedia_hours_prior_to_body_being_found
Someone, possibly uneducated or unqualified, reported Nancy Benoit’s death before our trained and qualified police force. There are numerous examples where an individual has added to the body of knowledge to help ’round out information’…possibly someone related to Bill Gates or an individual who lived through the tragedies that struck New Orleans or someone remembering when they attended a KISS concert back in the 70’s…while I understand not everyone can add to the body of knowledge on a high concept like the human genome project, I personally won’t be so quick to rule out an individual’s supplemental knowledge to Wikipedia.
I like Wikipeida because it represents the ideal of humanity’s pursuit of knowledge.
WE are Wikipedia, and our knowledge is the collective knowledge of mankind.
