Faith based knowledge resource

Techno Page By Harendra Alwis

Envisioned as a knowledge free-for-all, it was a miracle that could only happen in a world that was connected. It makes people reachable and their knowledge and experience accessible to strangers. It has been heralded by popular media and even governments, as a catalyst in an imminent knowledge revolution. In the space of six years, Wikipedia has become one of the most widely consulted knowledge resources in the world, leaving centuries worth of knowledge accumulated by other encyclopaedias such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to gather dust. The fact that it isn't a strictly professional endeavour, but only the product of thousands of volunteers, makes this all the more amazing.

Yet, it has also been an anathema. Many have called it a faith-based encyclopaedia and a highly over-rated repository for trivia. Earlier this year, one of Wikipedia's founders; Larry Sanger stood back and described Wikipedia as broken beyond repair, citing many problems with its model of knowledge acquisition and overall management. With criticism from both within its ranks and from the academic community rising, Wikipedia's Utopian veneer seems to be fading – or is it?

Even its founder Jimmy Wales describes Wikipedia as "a work in progress," but it's difficult not to admire the colossus of content (close to 2.1 million articles in the English language and counting), and admit that at least parts of it are excellent.

Wikipedia's weakness lies not only in the fact that its articles are vulnerable to vandalism and factual errors, introduced both intentionally or otherwise. If it is not based on the idea that anarchy will organise and conform by itself, users of Wikipedia partly relies on it when they use it as a reference tool.

Its utopian dream is anything but dysfunctional though, and all you need to do to see it in action for yourself is click the History tab on any random article you come across. You'll probably be amazed to see how the article you see on screen has evolved through perhaps hundreds of edits and reverts and it will continue to evolve. According to the Wikipedian theory, the result of collaboration and consensus should be the continual growth and improvement of every article, from a basic "stub" (a short, unpolished article) to a "gold standard" Featured Article (FA). The FA's are meant to exemplify the site's structure and style, as well as being reliable and stable.

At the current rate of progress, it may take thousands of years before even a simple majority of entries on Wikipedia to reach FA status. There are no guarantees however that the FA you look at today is of the same quality or reliability as the one that was originally elevated to FA status. Close to 400 out of about 1800 FA's have been demoted during Wikipedia's lifetime.
So clearly, Wikipedia has its pros and cons. On the one hand, the system has enabled Wikipedia to grow from zero to 5 million articles (in all languages) in a six-year period – an incredible achievement. On the other, countless man-hours are spent fighting vandalism or engaged in nitpicking and infighting. At worst, this takes the shape of so-called "edit wars," where two or more editors take turns to edit or undo each other's work.

Perhaps the most important fact that leaps out of Wikipedia is that a significant number of us that constitute the users of the site, are not as concerned about the accuracy and impartiality of the facts and information we consume, as much as their accessibility. This observation has been made of passive television and radio audiences before, and it seems equally applicable even to the consumers of interactivity in the Web 2.0 generation. Whatever you think about Wikipedia, it is not yet a reference tool you can rely on exclusively. If you do, you may be forced to change your mind each time you browse through its pages.
What do you think?

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