What's
a blog?
A blog is a way to communicate. What would you like to
communicate? It can be anything from baking cookies to solving the problems in
the Middle East. That’s a wide area, you should be able to find a place to jump
in.
Blogs are most often written by one person. It can be a
continuum of thoughts about some given topic. Sometimes blogs are written by a
group of people, a committee or a think tank. In that case authors can share or
take turns composing the articles. Either from one or several people, blogs
give information from a source that expresses a given set of ideas. Writers can
attract a few friends or thousands of people worldwide. The ability to easily
and quickly start this process makes it available to everyone. See www.blogger.com for simple instructions to begin.
What's a Wiki?
A wiki is not a flow of information from one source as a
blog. A wiki is like a group of people brought together in a large room to set
around a conference table and share ideas about a topic. They are there for the effect of sharing that the group offers. This is a dynamic environment that creates new ideas from the
interaction. The difference from setting around the conference table is that by
doing it electronically you can share with people from many different places
that don’t have to travel to one place. Think of the possibilities. You could collaborate
with experts in your field from several different countries. We are very fortunate to live in the United States, but it helps us tremendously to share views with people from other countries. I know it is a shock to some people, but not everyone thinks the same as us. To incorporate new thought processes into our lives gives us a much bigger and better understanding.
How
is Wikipedia maintained?
This is a very interesting topic to discover. The
goal of Wikipedia is to “offer every person on the planet free access to the
sum of all human knowledge”[1]. That’s a big goal.
Let’s look at how they function to keep growing and adding
information. According to Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia, this is done
through a collection of very knowledgeable and skilled volunteers. These volunteers
continually monitor and vote on changes that are made to the articles daily.
These votes are tallied and weighed by the strength of who voted to make the
final decision on keeping a change. Through this process Wikipedia has
maintained a solid core of information without graffiti or trash. The primary
operating principal of Wikipedia is neutrality. They just do not take sides on issues
whether it is genetic engineering or politics. They will offer the different opinions
and who supports each view. If you look at this from the 10,000 foot view, this
works for you and it works for those with different opinions. It is a
presentation of “just the facts”.
If you look at an article on Wikipedia you will see in
the upper right corner near the search box three choices; read, edit and
history. By clicking edit, you have the ability to make changes to the article.
These changes are listed by date and who made the change. Some changes show only
an IP address for the change.
By clicking the cur/prev area you can compare the current
text with the previous version. The versions are dated to see the latest
offering.
I find this process fascinating. The test of the workings
of the process can only be judged by the final product. Is it truthful, concise
and readable by the majority of the world? If it is then it is succeeding
toward it’s goal. A fuller understanding has given me a greater appreciation of
the information being presented by Wikipedia. Can an online encyclopedia
written by the masses give true and vital information. It seems the answer is
yes.
For more detailed information on the inner workings of
the approval process please listen to Jimmy Wales description. It is worth the
time spent to hear it. This is the link to find it.
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