W4 blog topic : discuss Reagle’s chapter 1-2
Joseph Michael Reagle’s « Good faith collaboration : the culture of wikipedia », is as it title suggests about the culture of wikipedia which for the most rely on good faith. First of all how and why did the wikipedia project arose eighteen years from now ? The author mention that during the twentieth century a trend was established and more people believed that through open source software we could solve of the world problem, and create a barrier free community which goal is to share and contribute to the sum of all knowledge.
As the author well explained wikipedia was not the first project of this sort,two of it predecessor were Paul Otlet’s Universal repertory and H.G. wells’s World brain.
But what makes the difference between all thos projects, is the culture and the vision the creators wanted to hàd down. If one’s vision of the world do not match it’s contemporary, the project will failed. Indeed, Paul Otlet was more of a documentalist, Wells a technocrats, the software Nupedia wanted to rely more on the Scholars but the only one that remained and seduced its contributors is wikipedia which rely for the most part on three simple principles : « neutral point of view », « no original research » and « verifiability ». As it is Wikipedia rely mostly on what the author calls the good faith of its contributors.
It was really interesting to learn the previous similar project and what they failed, the strenght of wikipedia culture and the utopia these men wanted to create : world peace.
However creating and spreading the software is one step closer to the goal but how about the people that cannot access the website due to censorship ? Or due to the high cost of the cumputers ? How to access the world’s knowledge if diplomatic barriers are held ? how to tackle the problems ? We cannot achieve a « world brain » without contributors of reknown country like Iran, China or Turkey (among other countries) and other countries chere having a cumputer at one’s house is not the norm.
As the author well explained wikipedia was not the first project of this sort,two of it predecessor were Paul Otlet’s Universal repertory and H.G. wells’s World brain.
But what makes the difference between all thos projects, is the culture and the vision the creators wanted to hàd down. If one’s vision of the world do not match it’s contemporary, the project will failed. Indeed, Paul Otlet was more of a documentalist, Wells a technocrats, the software Nupedia wanted to rely more on the Scholars but the only one that remained and seduced its contributors is wikipedia which rely for the most part on three simple principles : « neutral point of view », « no original research » and « verifiability ». As it is Wikipedia rely mostly on what the author calls the good faith of its contributors.
It was really interesting to learn the previous similar project and what they failed, the strenght of wikipedia culture and the utopia these men wanted to create : world peace.
However creating and spreading the software is one step closer to the goal but how about the people that cannot access the website due to censorship ? Or due to the high cost of the cumputers ? How to access the world’s knowledge if diplomatic barriers are held ? how to tackle the problems ? We cannot achieve a « world brain » without contributors of reknown country like Iran, China or Turkey (among other countries) and other countries chere having a cumputer at one’s house is not the norm.
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