I love wikipedia.
I love the way anyone can contribute.
You can contribute in many languages.
You can look up practically anything you are interested in - and it is usually there … like
(I love street art). …
If you want to you can register on wikipedia and start adding to the knowledge base by editing a page. It is as easy as ABC (which is not easy for everyone.)
But
- sometimes
Someone had deleted all the ‘proper’ text and replaced it with ‘Alison Krauss causes cancer.’ (And I doubt the veracity of this claim).
But the wiki community quickly sorted out the silliness and the text was back in order within the hour. (I this kind of incident is a small price to pay for the uptodateness - especially in comparison to the staid and non contemporaneity of leather bound tomes on library shelves - The Encyclopedia Britannica goes out of date before it is printed.)
With so many people reading and contributing to wikipedia I think it manages to be a dynamic and incredibly uptodate encyclopedia; but no doubt it does enshrine certain idelogical values.
And some people have had ENOUGH . They have set up their own wiki which is more Christian; more Conservative and apparently more pro American.
And so what ever you think of these values, at least they are explicit that they have them.
Ladies and Gents I give you…. Conservapedia.
And funnily enough you will notice Conservapedia has (ahem) used very similar software to wikipedia. .
- These are some of
And of course wikipedia describes Conservapedia … like this.
So knowledge is not neutral. We know that.
But at least open collaboration and shared writing on wikipedia is an attempt to be inclusive.
And finally, for your information, this is how Conservapedia defines street art.
What do you think of THAT??
Oh well. (And you might like to read Dana Boyd’s take on wikipedia). She is a great commentator of all things apophenia.
