Last week in class, we watched a video of a debate between the founder of wikipedia Jimmy Wales and a wikipedia opponent, who was writer Andrew Keen. I thought they both brought up valid points, but in the end I tended to side more with Jimmy Wales.
I do not think that the internet is bringing about the demise of the intellectual, as Andrew Keen believes. The reason I sided against him more is that it seemed most of his arguments had clear holes that Jimmy Wales had perfectly rational explanations for. One such argument was that wikipedia does not limit how long the articles are, and therefore people who read it can't tell which subject is more important. With print encyclopedias, the more important subjects are longer compared to less significant subjects. Keen said that without this discrimination, people will not be able to tell the difference and will not know what is significant. I don't think this is true, and Wales brought up a good point when he said that the only reason encyclopedia writers actually did this was because they had to use paper so there was limited space. I thought it was interesting when Wales said that wikipedia is the realization of all encyclopedia writers-- to have the ability to cover all subjects equally and factually. Of course there are mistakes on wikipedia, as there are in any encyclopedia, and it is necessary to read the information critically, but I think wikipedia is a great service. I use it all the time, and don't really know what I would do without it.
I use it all the time too and don't see what all the fuss is about. I think that they are picking on wikipedia now because they have run out of other options. Also, the length shouldn't matter because there is clearly going to be more information and more facts on one topic over another topic, but that doesn't mean that the topic with more info. is going to be more important or less important. I see that all thinks in wikipedia should be valuable because someone actually took the time to enter in the information.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Jimmy Wales. It makes sense that print encyclopedias have to put limits on the size of articles, but that's why Wikipedia is so innovative. Now articles can be as long as they need to be to cover a topic without worrying about the value of it. And if someone can't go on Wikipedia and realize that Pokemon has less intellectual value than Shakespeare because they see that the Pokemon article is longer, then I'd say there's more of an educational issue going on rather than it being the fault of Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia should be considered a very helpful tool of information. When using Wikipedia for a paper or project, it is generally required to have multiple sources anyways. If more than one source can be used to prove the point then it serves its purpose. There are much more crazy literature that has proper validity for papers such as UFO books or Michael Moore movies. If people don't like Wikipedia then just don't use it.
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