Thursday, October 7, 2010

Wiki Wizard

I apologize this is late but for some reason my original blog post I submitted last night did not make it to my blog when I checked it this morning. Not sure how it happened, but hopefully it finds its way through cyberspace back home. Until then, here is a replacement blog about what I was talking about last night. Sorry for the delay, but hope you enjoy.

 Last night, I was slightly bored, and after some blog reading, realized I had not posted a comment on the Keen-Wales debate. That gave me an excuse to burn an hour and watch the debate again to refresh on what had been previously discussed in class and after watching it, I got to thinking about the points that Andrew Keen made against sites such as Wikipedia that allow any user to post articles or just throw in their 2 cents.

Although I do agree with him slightly that there needs to be some disgression with simply allowing any Tom, Dick, or Harry to post or alter any article they please, I feel that people are smart enought to know what they are getting into and to check their sources if something they read on Wikipedia seems a little fishy.

 Even talkshow host Stephen Colbert poked fun at this point, when he encouraged his viewers to edit Wikipedia to claim that the African elephant population has tripled in the past six months.

On the whole, I feel Wikipedia is a good source of information that is fast and effiecent as calling a friend to ask them a question about a topic.....but it never hurts to check that your friend is telling you facts and not fibs.

On a lighter note, I found it slightly ironic that Andrew Keen has his own article on Wikipedia....as seen below.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Keen

......well done Mr. Wales.
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. Tim MyersOctober 7, 2010 at 5:09 PM

    I am a bit late in my post too, but I completely agree with what you said. Stephen Colbert had a great point and I loved how he presented it. I find it funny that with a big enough Smart Mob, you could potentially skew all the facts on a Wikipedia page. That does show it's weakness in truthfulness, but they label what has been cited and what has not which is really nice. In my post I called it a knowledge HUB because of the sheer amount of knowledge it contains, although not all can be guaranteed to be completely true.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JamesOctober 12, 2010 at 4:58 AM

    Yeah, I think that Andrew Keen just really wants to make a name for himself, and he found an angle he can work and get his book published. I find it hard to believe that anyone actually believes what he does, thinking that amateurs shouldn't be given a chance to shine, and that only professionals matter. He is an elitist, and is proud to be labeled as such.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)