Trust, but verify -- Wikipedia is valuable, but not perfect

We teach our students to be skeptical about things they find on the Internet. For example, we can show them this list of Wikipedia hoaxes. (It is noteworthy that the list is published by Wikipedia).

Wikipedia is a great starting place for research, but students should be warned to verify what they find there and elsewhere on the Internet.

On the other hand, the vast majority of Wikipedia information is useful and accurate. This was illustrated by a study published by Nature in December 2005. Scientific experts reviewed articles in both Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Forty two reviews turned up 4 serious errors in each encyclopedia and 162 minor errors in Wikipedia and 123 in Britannica. (Details are found at http://bit.ly/13gnr9Y).

While Britannica edged Wikipedia out, they were close, and, more important, the Wikipedia errors were corrected immediately. Britannica has subsequently ceased print publication.

More Wikipedia evaluations may be found at http://bit.ly/SjSRdn.

Positive results using Twitter and a wiki in a collaborative writing assignment

Last semester, I used Twitter and a wiki to illustrate collaborative writing and the writing of short documents in a Network News assignment. The student response was positive, so I will repeat the experience.

I started a class Twitter stream for links to current events relevant to our class. I told the students to follow the feed, and posted about 125 items during the semester.

The writing assignment was near the end of the term. Each student selected a particularly interesting post, and summarized it and its relevance to the class in a short document. Once the summary documents were polished, the students added them to a wiki page, creating a collaboratively authored Network News report for the term.

For more detail, see this post on the assignment and survey results.

Ward Cunningham on the invention and role of the wiki

Ward Cunningham invented the wiki to facilitate discussion of programming technique between himself and some colleagues. (His original wiki is still evolving).

Moira Gunn recently interviewed Cunningham and a colleague about one of his current projects, ZoomAtlas, a geographical wiki with the ability to draw as well as write.

I edited the interview, excerpting Cunningham's comments on the invention of the wiki, his motivation, and role of wikis (7 min 44 sec).

As you hear in the interview, Cunningham invented the wiki to solve a problem he had, and he decided not worry about permissions and authorization, because he trusted the members of his community to be responsible.

He sees wikis as doing things that could not be done another way. For example, one could not have created the Wikipedia by paying experts, but it has succeeded as a volunteer community wiki. (The Wikipedia founders first tried to create an online encyclopedia by conventional means and failed).