Friday, July 30, 2010

Brazilian Hair Creatine Problems

digital Reliability on the Web: Wikipedia



(This entry is best read
listening low-volume "Who are you?" of The Who. Open
this link in another tab
to hear and read on)

The scene takes place in the graduation party of a very young biomedical engineer University of North Carolina . In full celebration, the American change of clothes and shows a T-shirt that says " Thanks, Wikipedia ."

portal in the world number seven and number six in the U.S. is Wikipedia , according to the ranking of Alexa , based on the number of hits quarterly. This site, after nine years on the air, has become a collection center of human knowledge.

Type anything in a search for what we will probably find information leads us to this site. From obscure American soul singers in the seventies, until healing properties of green tea . From extensive profiles of African countries up little-known brands of electric guitars . From events that changed the world, even ephemeral pop stars .

However, the question does where to go this content? more than once has been told by high school teachers and college professors to recognize the aseptic and standardized wording of the website. The main charm of Wikipedia is to have a community of contributors who have checked, double checked, confirmed and published the information available.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, explained in his presentation Wikipedia intelligence (click to see video) some important data to understand the issues. "People think this is an emerging phenomenon: thousands and thousands of users to add some content and this emerges a coherent body of work. However, Wikipedia was written by a community, a dedicated group of several hundred volunteers who know each other and whom I know. "

Something like 0.7% of users contribute 50% of the edition to Wikipedia, or at least Aaron Swartz puts it , active user and contributor to the portal. Users full of general culture, while having some specific areas of knowledge, its biggest feat is to dominate the editorial and publishing styles typical of the articles in Wikipedia.

However, the issue of reliability in the Web falls mainly on the user. There is no data on the Web that can not be corroborated with at least two or three sources to know if been a fantastic invention of a blogger or something tangible, which correspond to the real world. A regular user of the Internet may access the article in Wikipedia about Simon Diaz and notify the world of his death. But it is likely that some of the dozens of contributors who have edited Article not hesitate to deny my fallacy.

0 comments:

Post a Comment