Community 2.0/DFL 2.0

Wikipedia has fundamentally and finally altered epistemology itself—our commonly held ideas about knowledge. For the academy at large, the significance of Wikipedia is roughly equivalent to that which the Heisenberg uncertainty principle had in the sciences in the 1920s—stating what is not possible rather than what is.

No matter how improbable it might seem that a Web page that anyone can edit would lead to valuable knowledge, Wikipedia makes clear that there is now another model for knowledge creation.

certainly everyone in that audience, has probably relied upon a knowledge acquisition path—from Google to Wikipedia—for which everyone is responsible and no one is responsible at once.

this introduction hopes to show nonbelievers, the uninitiated, and wiki followers alike that the simple act of allowing a Web page to be edited by a reader—which is really all that a wiki does—has createdPage  3 a global transition to networked epistemology that affects most anyone who is concerned with knowledge acquisition,

Well, it’s a Web page. Which anyone can edit. Usually, but not all the time. I mean, it’s an electronic mailing list with memory. It’s really a collaborative Web space where the mechanics of epistemology and the politics of knowledge creation can be revealed and explored.

the largest wiki with the greatest cultural impact

open wiki,

Wikipedia is not only a reference source, but it is the acknowledged site on the Web for claiming an interpretation of knowledge, as well as a place for controlling public image on an important figure.

A wiki is a Web page that users can modify.

Wikipedia works because of the massive scale of the Internet; there are simply so many users that articles can be destroyed and reconstructed overnight because enough readers on any given topic are invested in the discussion.

The basis of many critics’ complaints with Wikipedia lies in the fact that they view the project against the ideal of a singular, verifiable truth, while Wikipedia envisions itself as a project wide enough to host competing truths.

1.5 million articles

the central question over Wikipedia: namely, can its knowledge be trusted?

In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature’s news team. Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively

college-level scholarship should reflect deeper thinking and research skills than an encyclopedia than a wholesale retraction of the worth of Wikipedia.

By expressing surprise and disapproval at the fact that college students are citing the online encyclopedia in research papers, Wales would urge us to develop more awareness of how knowledge is produced and to make use of that awareness when interpreting and applying that knowledge. More bluntly stated, knowing where we get our knowledge is as important as the knowledge itself. The academy needs to react more quickly to the realities of knowledge production in a networked environment if it is to fulfill its role in creating and disseminating knowledge

But as long as there is an agreed-upon scope for any particular wiki, there is no reason not to apply this tool of networked consciousness to almost any endeavor.

While speaking at a college conference in June 2006 called “The Hyperlinked Society,” Wales said that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic hot water. “They say, ‘Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia’’’ and the information turned out to be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their plight, noting that he thinks to himself: “For God[’s] sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”

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