[Publib] Excellent article on Wikipedia

[Bruce Brigell]

Another excellent commentary on Wikipedia:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902 

[it must be Friday]

Bruce Brigell
Skokie Public Library

-----Original Message-----
From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Joe Schallan
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 2:34 PM
To: Publib Publib Discussion
Subject: [Publib] Excellent article on Wikipedia


[Excerpts:]

On March 1st, Wikipedia, the online interactive encyclopedia, hit the 
million-article mark, with an entry on Jordanhill, a railway station in 
suburban Glasgow. . . .  The Encyclopædia Britannica, which for more 
than two centuries has been considered the gold standard for reference 
works, has only a hundred and twenty thousand entries in its most 
comprehensive edition. Apparently, no traditional encyclopedia has ever 
suspected that someone might wonder about Sudoku or about prostitution 
in China. Or, for that matter, about Capgras delusion (the unnerving 
sensation that an impostor is sitting in for a close relative), the 
Boston molasses disaster, the Rhinoceros Party of Canada, Bill Gates's 
house, the forty-five-minute Anglo-Zanzibar War, or Islam in Iceland. 
Wikipedia includes fine entries on Kafka and the War of the Spanish 
Succession, and also a complete guide to the ships of the U.S. Navy, a 
definition of Philadelphia cheesesteak, a masterly page on Scrabble, a 
list of historical cats (celebrity cats, a cat millionaire, the first 
feline to circumnavigate Australia) . . . .

Because there are no physical limits on its size, Wikipedia can aspire 
to be all-inclusive. It is also perfectly configured to be current: 
there are detailed entries for each of the twelve finalists on this 
season's "American Idol," and the article on the "2006 Israel-Lebanon 
Conflict" has been edited more than four thousand times since it was 
created, on July 12th, six hours after Hezbollah militants ignited the 
hostilities by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. Wikipedia, which was 
launched in 2001, is now the seventeenth-most-popular site on the 
Internet, generating more traffic daily than MSNBC.com and the online 
versions of the Times and the Wall Street Journal combined. The number 
of visitors has been doubling every four months; the site receives as 
many as fourteen thousand hits per second."

[End excerpts.]

Since it is clear that Wikipedia, along with Google, have become places 
of informational first resort for most of our patrons, we should 
understand the philosophy that underlies the project and the story of 
its creation and growth.  Stacy Schiff, in the current (July 31) issue 
of The New Yorker, covers the ground in excellent fashion, with much 
attention given to Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, and to the 
evolution of his project, even if she concludes with a line that is 
just a bit too facile.

It is available, for now, online.  I have tinyurled it:

http://tinyurl.com/gckod

The citation:  Annals of Information -- "Know It All: Can Wikipedia 
Conquer Expertise?" by Stacy Schiff, The New Yorker, July 31, 2006.

Again I make my plea that the best way for librarians to understand the 
Wikipedia phenomenon is to participate in it.  I've launched pages on 
nine topics and done heavy editing on 16 more.  I've done minor edits 
-- fixing typos, spelling, punctuation, and so on -- on hundreds of 
pages.  Not only will this give you an idea of how Wikipedia authorship 
and editing works, but it will make you appreciate just how difficult 
it is to write a entry that is accurate, clear, and well referenced.  
It will make you appreciate the work of encyclopedists of the past.  It 
may even start you wondering about the nature of truth in the context 
of knowledge held in common.

Joe Schallan
Phoenix

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