Wales "has marshalled an army of volunteers who believe that, working collaboratively, they can produce an encyclopedia that is as good as any written by experts, and with an unprecedented range."
This is the main goal of Wikipedia. The intentions of the site are ultimately good, but can we achieve this is our society?
There are so many different types of people who use the internet and Wikipedia reaches them all. I feel that because of this, Wales' goal is unattainable. There is no credibility factor that is necessary in order for a n encyclopedia to be useful. There is a difficult balance that Wales intends to maintain between free and easy knowledge and credible knowledge. That's the conflict with using Wikipedia as a source - the information may not be reliable.
Despite saying all of that, If Wales were to find that balance, it would be a revolution in information technology. I think it could change our society from being ill-informed, to over-informed.
One could also argue that if knowledge is derived from experience, Wikipedia is the perfect source. It could combine the experiences and opinions of all the different types of people in the world to create a super-base of knowledge. However, I still believe this to be an idealogical way of thinking.
I agree that Wales' idea is kind of on the rose-colored glasses side of things. Ideally, yes, Wikipedia would work as an easily accessible, accurate, up-to-date source of information. As it stands, though, Wikipedia is way too unreliable to ever work in exactly the way that Wales intended.
ReplyDelete