Friday, September 25, 2009

Oh Wiki – YouRe so Fine

Our speaker last week mentioned that between Encarta and Wikipedia who would bet on open source encyclopedia as something more viable than one that is created and sponsored by Microsoft. No one saw the success story of Wikipedia. Since its inception in 2001, its rise to online fame has surprised all of us. However, Wikipedia’s growth seems to have plateaued. Contributors have suddenly become too lazy to create new articles or to fix errors. At the same time, the contributors are trying to improve on Wikipedia’s trustworthiness. Case in point, the entry of John Seigenthaler which stated that he'd been a suspect in the John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations.

  • "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.” --Wikipedia

Because of other hoax entries, the popular site started imposing editorial control. Because of the new rules, public participation has dwindled. Also, what more can you add when the site contains more than 3Million entries. So when I was in high school, I saw the rise & fall of Encarta. Now, I’m experiencing the Wiki Plateau.

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