My name is Sandy and I am a Wikipediaholic

When I was much younger, I used to pepper my dad with constant questions about how things worked or who invented what. My dad would always respond with the same thing: "go look it up". Sitting in our family room was a bright, shiny set of Encyclopedia Brittanicas. Now, I don't know if my dad made me look things up because he wanted to teach me to be self-sufficient or if he just didn't know the answers. Either way, I did feel this sense of independence of going out and finding the answers. And I would not only find the answer to my questions, but also answers to a lot of other questions that I didn't know I had. Clearly, intellectual curiosity was satisfied by encycolpedias and I spent several years at home or in the library, perusing the large books of information. Then came the internet and suddenly answers to tons of questions came pouring out onto a screen. Any topic in a timely fashion and easy linking from one piece of information to another. I remember getting hooked in 1994, soon after Kurt Cobain had committed suicide. Having already been a huge fan, I spent hours in the CompSci lab in Upson Hall at Cornell, surfing the web (on a Mac, no less!) for information on Nirvana. Everything from song lyrics to conspiracy theories about Cobain's death. I was clearly addicted All I could think was "where was this when I was 10?" Of course, I needed to know where to look for different things and there was definitely a disparity in the quality of information. And, of course, there were the deserted sites that showed promise before the owner decided that the thrill of running a web-site was gone. Suddenly finding useful information became difficult because of all the noise out there. Of course, many credit Google for reducing the noise with their powerful search engine. But there's no standard level of information or necessarily any topic focus. Instead, I could get a random article or something about another topic that refers to my specific topic of interest. That's why, of late, when I want information on a particular topic, I forego the primary search engines and often go directly to Wikipedia. 

No, this isn't meant to be a blog to tell you about the hot new site. Wikipedia seems like it has been around forever. Rather, as I reflect on the way I use the internet, I am stunned at my reliance on it. Any time I want a relatively objective scoop on a topic, I head directly to Wikipedia (actually I use the Wikipedia gadget off my Live.com home page in most cases). The breadth and depth of topics is phenomenal as is the currency of information. The community feels a true ownership of the content and take it upon themselves to keep the engine running. I've often thought about why the content owners do it after so many special interest sites (and now blogs) fail to be maintained. Why doesn't a topic just die? And to be fair, perhaps some topics have died. However, most I have visiting are incredibly current. I tend to think the quality of information is due to the ownership of the collective. There's something about being depended on as part of something bigger (think global, act local). In addition, the ability to open editing up to multiple people helps keep it more objective as people seem to almost police one another (as opposed to needing a uber-authority to monitor every change). But even through it's objectiveness, there's a level of informality that makes it even more appealing. So when I surf to the [ex-football star] Maurice Clarrett page or the "Welcome Back Kotter" page (yes, it's funny the different topics I find myself looking up), it's amazing how up-to-date it is (fyi, there's a "Welcome Back Kotter" movie coming out with Ice Cube as the star!). I remember talking to Ward Cunningham about it last year and he was commenting on how fascinating the coverage of Katrina was. It became a news source that was constantly updated and as many people were using that as were using many of the top news sources because the Wikipedia information seemed to be coming faster. Wikipedia went from a complement to Brittanica/Encarta to CNN/Fox News. It really is collaborative development of information with a lower barrier of entry when compared to open source code. Of course, with this comes a lack of fact-checking and a caveat emptor to the users. Even Wikipedia itself is adamant about not being cited as an official source. It reminds me of the difference between unsupported software and releases where companies stand behind it (not just talking about Microsoft, but companies like Red Hat as well). When I fiddle around with writing code, I am incredibly appreciative of some of the freeware or open source apps I use for writing better code. But if I run into a problem, I don't get upset with the authors. On the other hand, when Visual Studio doesn't work as promised, I do because the expectation is there as they are a company standing behind a product I paid for (well, I get it for free, but you know what I mean :) ). There's a place for both classes of applications. I am appreciative of open source tools, but if I am counting on something, then I should be willing to drop the $$. Of course, getting information on a random topic so that you look smart when the time comes for barroom trivia is a lot less critical than keeping an enterprise website up, so I think Wikipedia has less to be concerned about. Still, it's nice to know that they don't see their usefulness as a means to usurp all other sources of information, but rather serve as an incredibly effective utility that helps people achieve their goals. Coexistence can occur, whether we are talking about software or sources of information. To those that update the site with insightful information as well as those who write the freeware or open source apps that I have used, my hats off to you. You give community a good name...

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 23, 2006
  Wikipedia is great & awesome in the same way all Open Source ideas are.
  
  MS has a lot of work in front of them if they are willing to understand and learn from Open Source, Free Software and Open Minds.
• Anonymous
  August 24, 2006
  <chorus>Hi Sandy</> (sorry, I couldn't resist) :)