Wikipedia is no stranger to controversy. The giant, community-authored wiki encyclopedia is a lightning rod for heated debates about the pros and cons of open and publicly editable online knowledge bases and about the web in general. I discussed one such controversy, involving Britannica and Nature, here. That scuffle seemed to come out more or less in wikipedia's favour. For a contrarian's view on wikipedia and a defense of the ivory tower, see Nicholas Carr's take on what he regards to be the naive religiosity of those who believe in the power of Web2.0. Carr is one of the most interesting bloggers writing about new IT technologies (even if his thinking is often wrong-headed). Whatever one's perspective, it's clear that many people are captivated by wikipedia's apparent power. Even the US government is getting in on the action. In doing so it has found itself branded as a vandal. The Politico blog has that story.
No comments:
Post a Comment