Wikis
Wikis are very interesting and helpful tools. Wikis were designed with the intention to help individuals to collaborate in a social manner. Wikis were also created so that anyone with a web browser could edit and contribute freely. It is therefore very user-friendly and easy to use. People often refer to Wikis as a Collective intelligence. "In the classic formulation, collective intelligence refers to a situation where nobody knows everything, everyone knows something, and what any given member knows, is accessible to any other member upon request on an ad hoc basis" (Jenkins, 2006).
It should be noted that Wiki (form) is not the same as the wiki software. Different wikis run on different software. Also, Wikipedia is one form of a wiki - it is not the only form.
Wikipedia was first established in January 2001. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Wikipedia initially started off with a few articles, but very soon articles accumulated rapidly. Today, there are more than 3 million English-language articles. Articles are also available in more than 250 languages. This is amazing! Personally, I thought there were only a few languages. In saying this, German, Japanese and French are very popular languages in the Wikipedia world.
The issue with Wikipedia is the reliability or authenticity of articles and resources. In 2004, a professor from the USA conducted a study to find out just how reliable Wikipedia was. He deliberately made 13 errors on Wikipedia. He originally thought it would take three days to fix these mistakes. To his great surprise - the errors were fixed within 3 hours. There are people that edit and administrate Wikipedia on a continual basis.
However, Wikipedia is not flawless, there are mistakes. In saying this, for an online social encyclopedia (with a Worldwide audience), the Wikipedia is not that bad. Though it is true, academics and teachers do not particular like students to quote from Wikipedia for the simple fact that Wikipedia is not entirely bulletproof. Interestingly, Wales suggest people consult other scholarly resources too when researching. “In most academic institutions, Wikipedia, along with most encyclopedias, is unacceptable a major source for a research paper” (Wikipedia, 2010).
There are also other interesting wikis. For example, there is Lostpedia, Wikia, Wikianswers, WoWWiki, Wookieepedia and many more. A very famous Wiki where people could engage and collaborate is called Wetpaint.
References
Jenkinks, H. (2006). Collectibe intelligence vs. The widom of crowds. Retreived from http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/11/collective_intelligence_vs_the.html
Wikipedia. (2010). Wikipedia: Researching with Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia
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