Wikipedia Conquering Google First, World Next? - Examining Wikipedia
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Most of us are familiar with Wikipedia's encyclopedic approach, and some of us have even edited articles ourselves (or know someone who has). Wikipedia takes advantage of the so-called "wisdom of crowds." This idea, popularized in a 2004 book by James Surowiecki, states that "the aggregation of information in groups" results in decisions that "are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group." Naturally, this information was collected from a Wikipedia entry.
The "wisdom of crowds" approach has its problems, which I will discuss later. For now, though, I'd like to point out that the online encyclopedia in a plethora of languages is not the only project being run by the Wikimedia Foundation. The non-profit charitable organization's collaborative projects include Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and Meta-Wiki.
So what are all these projects doing? Wiktionary is "a collaborative project to product a free, multilingual dictionary" with all the useful stuff you'd expect from a dictionary including etymologies, sample quotation, pronunciations and more. At the time of this writing it has more than 300,000 entries in 389 languages. I tried a favorite sample word, "juggling," against Wiktionary and my favorite online dictionary. The latter did a much better job of defining the term, both in terms of accuracy and completeness of the definition. It was kind of interesting to see that Wiktionary included an animation of a stick figure juggling, and, more importantly, a link to the Wikipedia article about juggling, which allows the user to explore the subject more deeply.
Wikibooks has the mission of creating a free collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit. It looks like an easy place to kill a lot of time, as the books cover a wide range of subjects, including the sciences and humanities. More practical areas are also covered, such as automobile maintenance. There is a guide for teachers who want to use wikibooks in class, and a selection of "good books" that the site says "met a minimum standard of criteria, and can be used as models for future books." As with other Wikimedia projects, at least some of the books/articles on Wikibooks refer back to Wikipedia articles.
Wikinews seems to be a huge experiment in citizen journalism. A look at the front page reveals a number of articles with topics covered elsewhere in the conventional media, as well as a number of mildly interesting items that hardly anyone has picked up yet. At least some of the writers are writing like serious reporters.
Wikiversity describes itself as "a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities." It boasts a series of portals that cover topics you would expect to study in a university, such as humanities, physical sciences, life sciences, etc. Each portal not only has a list of resources developed by volunteers, but a list of tasks that need doing, featured learning activities, and more.
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