Wikipedia is a portmanteau combining the words 'wiki' and 'encyclopedia'. 'Wiki' is a Hawaiian word for fast or speedy blended with the word encyclopedia ... a quick encyclopedia. In addition to the Hawai'ian meaning, the word 'wiki' now has another meaning in the Web 2.0 world. A wiki is a website "whose content can be edited by anyone with access to it." (Full definition of wiki here.)
Wikipedia is an example of a wiki. We've discovered that the Web 2.0 world is social and collaborative. Blogs and Twitter are social. Google Docs and wikis are social and collaborative. Wikipedia is one kind of a wiki.
There are many other types of wikis. For example, one wiki focuses on resources for people who find themselves homeless in Los Angeles. To quote from this wiki: "Los Angeles Homeless Resource (Wiki) is a vast collection of L.A. homeless resources and information. It is a collaborative effort, one which brings together service providers, homeless advocates, government agencies and the general public. This resource is volunteer-driven and is freely edited by any user."
Another useful wiki is Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. This wiki is a collection of, as it is named, best practices for library success.
There are many, many useful wikis. Use Google to find one that you might like.
Discussion of Wikipedia
What is the history of Wikipedia?
"Wikipedia was founded as an offshoot of Nupedia, a now-abandoned project to produce a free encyclopedia. Nupedia had an elaborate system of peer review and required highly qualified contributors, but the writing of articles was slow. During 2000, Jimmy Wales, founder of Nupedia, and Larry Sanger, whom Wales had employed to work on the project, discussed ways of supplementing Nupedia with a more open, complementary project. Multiple sources suggested the idea that a wiki might allow members of the public to contribute material, and Nupedia's first wiki went online on January 10, 2001." Continue reading at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Wikipedia_history.Is the information contained in Wikipedia reliably accurate?
The short answer is "Mostly." Please read page 27 of the book Wikipatterns by Stewart Mader. (The link will connect to an electronic copy of this book.) Read more about Wikipedia accuracy in a December 2005 article in Nature. Wikipedia also supplies an article that discusses reliability at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia.Should students use the information they find in Wikipedia in their academic projects?
Wikipedia, itself, has a very readable and thorough article about this topic. Please read "Researching with Wikipedia."
What happens in the history of editing a Wikipedia article?
One of the strong points of the wiki method is that the complete editorial history of each article is available. As an article is changed and corrected, the theory is that it becomes more accurate. Below, I have provided a link to a video that examines the history of a Wikipedia article. This particular article is about the history of the article that covers use of the umlaut diacritic (for example, Mötley Crüe) in heavy metal music. This article has many good examples of how decisions are made in dealing with difficult issues in a subject area. (Warning: This video has a section where this Wikipedia article is vandalized with profanity. If you are offended by words of profanity, you might not want to watch the video.)Are you a Wikipedian or a Wikipedist?
Video: Heavy Metal Umlaut
Find out here.
Exercise
For this lesson, I'd like for everyone to try editing a Wikipedia article. Yes, you are going to edit a Wikipedia article. To prepare for this lesson, I edited the entry for the Jacaltec language. My method was this:
- I signed up for a Wikipedia account (Yes, another different account.)
- I found an interesting article on Wikipedia.
- I did some research in our library to discover if I could find something to add to this article. In this case, I looked up Jacaltec in our copy of the reference book Ethnologue: Languages of the World.
- I edited the article.
- I cited the information that I added. (Instructions for citing sources in Wikipedia.)
So, please try this for the exercise.
- Find a Wikipedia article that interests you.
- Try to find some information in our library that you can add to the article.
- Cite the information that you added.
- Once you've done that, tell us what you did (what article did you update, how did you find information to update, etc) in our shared Google Doc for this lesson. Clickety, click to get to the Google Doc.
Try adding an entry on your blog about Wikipedia. Do you use it? Are you a Wikipediholic? How do you help students when they ask you about Wikipedia? Something else you'd like to say about Wikipedia?
