[Pil-pc-oceania] ppp blog

[RussGrayson]

On Wikis...
A recent assessment published, I think in The Guardian (that might well be
wrong) found that Wikipedia was almost as accurate in its entries as
Encyclopedia Brittanica.

The advantage of collaborative media is that it can harness the wisdom of
the crowd, which is more than The Australian can do.

I have not seen The Australian story, however, in regard to the old media
formats such as newspapers, there are journalists that embrace the
opportunities brought be new media and those that resist them in the same
way that King Canute resisted the tide and with the same probable
consequences.

As for Wikipedia not being an authoritative source, well, it surely must be
more credible than the dross that appears in mainstream media from the two
main carboncopy parties and the Greens.

...Russ


On 20/8/07 6:17 PM, "jedd" <jedd at progsoc.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 20 Aug 2007, Deb Guildner wrote:
>> Wiki entry is subject to change by anyone, it seems.
> 
>  Note that wikis are a technology type.  Part of their power
>  is that they can, usually, be modified by anyone - the advantage
>  there is that you can fix mistakes as you find them, rather than
>  posting a fix to someone who may or may not understand the
>  distinction and may or may not have time to update their site.
> 
>  Wikis are not inherently wicked because of this feature, though.
> 
>>   a.. Wicked Pedia alterations | The Australian
> 
>  The Australian's expressed opinion should be assessed in the
>  light of how it sees the world, of course.  Would The Australian
>  be happy to see people consult other sources than itself for their
>  information?  Do they have a vested interest in beating up a story
>  like this -- effectively a story about a competitor.
> 
>  I suspect the distinction here, between providing the ability for
>  anyone to update an online reference source, and a newspaper
>  that will only modify its view of the world if you were to, say,
>  enact some monumentally wicked media ownership laws .. is
>  left as an exercise for the reader.
> 
>> RE:Wiki, I'd leave it in the internet outbasket.  It's hardly an
>> authoritative source.
> 
>  By which I guess you mean wikipedia - which is a site that happens
>  to use a wiki technology (a suite called MediaWiki, which they've
>  also used over at http://www.permaculture.info, as it happens).
> 
>  Most people I know consider Wikipedia to be authoritative on any
>  number of topics.  Mind, most people I know are IT nerdy types, and
>  while there's the occasional jihad in this field, it's not as prone to
>  outright lies and manipulation as, say, politics, military, commercial
>  media, et cetera.
> 
>  Every page on wikipedia contains accompanying talk/discuss and
>  history (of changes) pages -- useful things to work through if you're
>  in any doubt as to the veracity of the information you're reading.
>  ( If only print media provided this level of meta-data about every
>  story they published. )
> 
>  I'd suggest this is a preferable approach (and indeed, you should
>  be thinking critically whenever anyone tells you anything, in any
>  medium) to the outright dissing of the 7.9 million articles, and the
>  tens of thousands of active contributors, on wikipedia.
> 
>  Jedd.
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