i've enjoyed working with wikis for the past couple of years, submitting content for memory alpha (the star trek reference wiki...yeah, yeah. i know, we can say it: "geek") and some short-lived record collector wikis. wikis are fun and they're useful, though i have to admit that the ramifications of planet wiki are a little disturbing to me.
it's way too easy for questionable and downright wrong information to worm it's way into a wiki. if it's something like a staff wiki, or a star trek geek wiki, it's not a big deal. but i see a lot of library patrons, most of them young kids and teenagers, adopting wikipedia as their go-to information resource. the whole eglalitarian philosophy behind wikipedia, if you ask me, just doesn't pan out in the real world: wikipedia presupposes, by its very nature, that it's a GOOD thing that everyone can contribute content, wikipedia presupposes that everyone has something substantive to add. i'm not sure that's the case. a lot of garbage information slips onto wikipedia. wikipedia is at the forefront of the junk-information proliferation, the flagship of the faster-is-better school of mcresearch. i'm not a fan.
for smaller scale projects, though - wikis are useful and fun, as long as people aren't citing wikipedia in their reasearch papers, i am AOK with them!! :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment