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  • From: "Barry" <nebarry AT verizon.net>
  • To: "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] General Interest:
  • Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:55:51 -0400

There was a brief discussion on the value of Wikipedia recently, thought this might be of interest:

http://tinyurl.com/259eesa

After Google, Wikipedia might be the single most powerful new influence on how we as a culture organize, disseminate, and access information. For millions of Web-connected citizens, the online encyclopedia is the place of first resort for looking up everything from Shirley Sherrod to sickle-cell anemia. There's no question about its scope or popularity: It has 3.3 million articles in English alone (compare that to the roughly 120,000 articles in the online edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica) and attracts nearly 78 million visitors each month. There's also no question that it's an astonishing triumph of open-source development: The entire colossus was built by a bunch of largely anonymous and entirely unpaid contributors.

There is, however, a great deal of argument—and consternation—about the accuracy of Wikipedia entries. (A headline in the Onion made the point nicely: "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence.") That's why I went looking for Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales, then quit the project over disputes about its governance and the quality and credibility of its content. Sanger is also a trained philosopher with a focus on epistemology—the study of knowledge—which made him an attractive person to talk to about how technology is changing what we know, what we think we know, and how we think we know it. After leaving Wikipedia, Sanger founded Citizendium, a rival online encyclopedia, and now spends most of his time on WatchKnow, a nonprofit organization that uses wiki principles to organize and rate nearly 20,000 educational videos for kids.

**********

N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Classics and Bible Instructor, TAA
http://www.theamericanacademy.net
(2010 Savatori Excellence in Education Winner)
Mentor, TNARS
http://www.tnars.net

http://my.opera.com/barryhofstetter/blog
http://mysite.verizon.net/nebarry





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