The most famous, most infamous and most authoritative site on the Web by all measures is Wikipedia. While you may not think of an encyclopedia as a social site, this global reference is a community work produced largely by volunteer-enthusiasts. It touts 2.6 million entries in English, more than 800,000 German articles and 3.2 million references in other languages. 

And, amazingly, you can get involved and shape this Earth’s greatest reference site yourself. To find out how to get involved, visit the Wikipedia Community Portal.

More than 75,000 people have contributed actively to the creation of Wikipedia. Known as “Wikipedians,” these people do much more than write and publish. The site is built on “wiki” (which means “quick” in Hawaian) technology, a simple editing system that lets anyone make a change to a text, retaining a copy of the older versions so that, if others disagree, they can revert to the earlier text. It may sound chaotic, but because Wikipedians earn more power over time based on the quality and quantity of their contributions, their own authority has been earned and the quality of the articles improves.

Wikipedia’s authority has been the subject of considerable debate, as traditional encyclopedia publishers have disputed its approach to expertise. Nevertheless, the journal Nature has conducted a review that famously found Wikipedia approximates the accuracy of Encyclopedia Brittanica, with greater breadth. That breadth reaches into what are, in this writer’s opinion, often trivial and obscure. For example, the fairly comprehensive coverage of pornographic actors and technical jargon doesn’t add to Wikipedia’s authority. (Disclosure: I have been a sometimes critic of Wikipedia, though often am accused of this as a result of reporting on the mistakes and peccadillos of Wikipedians; my own Wikipedia entry was deleted as irrelevant despite having been a journalist and entrepreneur for several decades).

Overall, the site is the most valuable source of information to develop on the Web. It will always benefit from greater participation by Internet users, so dive in. Don’t just take Wikipedia as a reference book–write it, too.

Getting involved in the Wikipedia community demands real scholarship, both about the topics you’ll write about and the processes that Wikipedians go through. Success involves a kind of lawyerly approach to arguing for your position, which is supposed to be neutral with regards the topic. Thick skin will help, knowledge will usually overcome opposing opinions about what the “truth” of an issue or topic is. A notable site that uses wiki tools to present differing views on a controversial topic is Debatepedia.org. 

Home Page: Wikipedia.org
The most wide-reaching reference book every written by humanity. Like any source of information, you should cross-check the facts.

Tags: community, encyclopedia, reference, wiki

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Social Site Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.