On the other side of the coin, Andrew Keen brought up some good points. Who are posting these articles? How accurate are they? And how can an outsider know what is more important, Pokemon or Shakespeare?
Web 2.0, in my opinion, has brought society to a new level. And I think it is a good thing. I can get on Facebook and find old friends from elementary school. I can post links to my friends that I find funny. It's a social HUB that most people are on. People can Tweet what they're doing and millions of followers instantly know. It is a social and cultural revolution.
When I want to find information on a topic, my first stop is Wikipedia. Because it's reliable and I know it's all true? No. Because I know hundreds of people have reviewed that article and it has plenty of sources at the bottom. I can go to those sources and see corresponding information that helps me back up the information I was looking for. Just as Facebook is a social HUB, Wikipedia is a knowledge HUB.Andrew Keen has good points about anonymity and not knowing who exactly is contributing, but I disagree in that they NEED monetary compensation. If they wanted it, they would ask. Wikipedia is not "dumbing down" users. Articles are based on sourced documents. Wikipedia is just a compilation of information.
I have to side with Jimmy Wales, especially since he is doing this non-profit, not even charging people to access this plethora of information. What harm has Wikipedia done?
I agree it is nice to have a "knowledge HUB" as you call it. I use Wikipedia sometimes to fill in gaps in information that I find in other places. I do not however usually use Wikipedia as an "accredited" source of information when writing school papers.
ReplyDeleteI do the same thing. I usually start at Wikipedia and look for main points about my topic then branch off. Without the internet sources we have today, research projects would be a nightmare. Everyone would have to go to the library to look up every source they needed and pray someone else hasn't checked out the same book. I do still see value in physical media but also think that the internet sure has made things a lot easier.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure Andrew Keen fails miserably at debating... I got the impression he came up with 2 arguments against Wikipedia and ran with those, even after they were addressed.
ReplyDeleteArgument 1 - Contributers are not paid...
Well Andrew, if they wanted to be paid people would stop writing articles on wikipedia for free. Soooo lets move on to your second (even more insane point)
Argument 2 - Articles on some stuff CANNOT be as long as articles on other stuff!!!
Really? Did you really just make that argument (multiple times) through out this debate? On what planet does that even make sense? This is not print media, its the internet and there is no reason to limit the length on anything. It's information and last I checked information is a good thing so why are you trying to limit it Andrew? If you don't want to know about Pokemon, then don't go to that wiki page.
Yeah when did the length of an article become the ranking system for importance? Encyclopedia's can only make a book or set of books so big so I understand they had to make concessions and choose "importance." But this is the internet, and the new age of knowledge, that had no bounds. If somebody really loves Pokemon and wants to share all the details of the game then I'm all for it, I'm sure someone else out there will find it and appreciate it. Same goes for Harry Potter, it doesn't mean Hamlet is necessarily less important to literature because it has less pages.
ReplyDeleteI mean Andrew Keen himself admits that he has used wikipedia repeatedly, but I think what he is really worried about is a lack of a creativity market. And as someone in the audience said, the career market for creative jobs is not failing, so maybe he was just misinformed. I agree that his arguments about compensation are a little weak, however, in the future this will continue and will it come to the point where people really aren't making money for their creative ventures? it's a hard case to examine because we all want free knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Wikipedia is a knowledge HUB. I like that term because I think it accurately describes it. I think Andrew Keen would probably acknowledge it as a knowledge up, but I think he would not put a HUB on the same level as britannica. I think there are many things that people use everyday that are all making their way online or into an app somewhere, and Encyclopedias are just the beginning.
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