www.inkthinkerblog.com — My article “Wiki-what-ia? Approaching Encyclopedia Entries in the Electronic Age” is now live in the May/June issue of Science Editor, the journal of the Council of Science Editors. If you’re a CSE member, you can access it through the issue TOC.
Sneak peek:
With the era of e-communication in full swing, changes are showing up across the board in publishing. Editing and composition tools have morphed into something faster and more technologic, so it only makes sense that research tools would follow suit.
Enter Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), a free, collaboratively built online encyclopedia. Wikipedia, which was started in 2001, had nearly 1.5 million entries in English alone as of this writing and articles available in more than 100 languages.
Anyone with Internet access can edit, correct, or create entries, and more than 65,000 people around the world do so actively. Because of its wide content base and ready availability, Wikipedia is gaining speed as a resource for students and researchers. But does the communal, everyman approach to its writing make it a stronger source for information, or a weaker one?
And those of you who are CSE members, I’ll see you at the conference in Austin this weekend!
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I don’t consider Wiki a cite-able source because it lacks that slippery quality of authority. I use it for things I have never heard of in order to get ideas for related search terms. It’s also interesting to see how many “takes” there can be on particular topics based on the cultural influence of the various contributors.
That’s great, Kristen, congrats! It’s funny you recently wrote this (and had it published. We were just talking about it over at one of Hsien’s blogs (EyeOnDNA.com, I believe it was).
It also lacks the quality of existing in a given form for a given period of time (call it “editions”) that cite-able sources tend to need. There are a few collaborative biology projects that do have more authority, quality control, and longer-term “editions” for entries (Tree of Life comes to mind, and there’s a new project just launched). They bring in other challenges, however.
How cool! I hope this clip is a byproduct of the the Query Challenge…which (shamefully) I am so behind on.
I like the collective concept, but I dont like the inaccuracy of it all. I dont TRUST what I read in wiki. In fact, my son’s school does not allow that as a resource when gathering information for a specific project.
Kristen, I’ve read your article. Excellent work, just as I expected. Your writing is always a pleasure to read.
P.S. I am now officially a grandma. :-)