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…Fill In The Missing Pieces
A free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 17 million articles (over 3.5 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.
That’s how Wikipedia describes itself, although it has been called many other things:
- A breeding ground for incorrect information on an infinite number of topics.
- The savior of the African Elephant population.
- The place where useless facts go to die.
- The online encyclopedia that no one seems to trust, but everyone uses.
Today Wikipedia turns 10 years old.
It’s hard to imagine what the world was like before Wikipedia.
Remember when finding facts use to require referring to experts or finding a reliable source?
Now we can just type in a term on our search engine of choice, and odds are good that one of your first hits will be a Wikipedia page.
Who needs reliable sources when you have experts like “random guy” from “who knows where.” The only qualifications he needs are a laptop and internet access.
Who’s to say “random guy” is not an expert of some sort. Maybe he’s the leading aficionado on the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry and Batman supervillains , or maybe he’s just really bored.
And that is what makes Wikipedia great, you never know what you’re going to get.
Happy 10th anniversary Wikipedia!
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More on the Story: Wikipedia turns 10
…just for fun:
…keep rolling along
...how to lose a bike in 10 seconds
Does the Internet make us better sharers?
Better pirates, smugglers, stalkers, and typists–definitely.
But sharers?
Unless we’re talking about sharing every intimate detail about your day as it happens (thank you Twitter and Facebook) I’m not sure I follow the logic.
Evidently there are some people out there who do.
As a new bike-sharing program gets set to launch in D.C. this belief points towards its success.
Personally, I don’t think bike-sharing needs justification. The programs are a great sustainable option for any community.
Internet or no Internet, some people will steal bikes most people won’t.
A similar program in Edmonton, Canada was started in 2005. Within three years 95% of the bikes were stolen (O Canada).
Yet college campuses across the country seem to have no problem with bike sharing.
Having said that, the idea is that the collaborative nature of the web has changed the way Americans think about sharing and ownership.
Programs like Netflix, Zipcar, and Pandora, support this theory, but of course aside from Pandora, they all come at an additional price.
But here’s the question–Does Internet sharing really translate to real world sharing?
Many think yes, it does.
No official studies have been conducted to confirm this theory.
And we all know that nothing is official until some organization has spent three years and several million dollars proving some statistic that we didn’t really need to know.
Personally I think this is a question akin to which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Did the Internet make us better sharers? Or did we finally get around to sharing on the Internet?
New York Times: Sharing and the Web
…other news
Rolling Stone: President Obama interview
…bi-daily smile…
the key to good sharing? guilt and trickery
Zer
Stephanie
The2Women
