Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Barry" <nebarry AT verizon.net>]

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