There was an interesting article by Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal yesterday entitled "Forget the Articles,Best Wikipedia Read Is Its Discussions." He points out insightfully that one of the most fascinating aspects of Wikipedia lies in the discussion tab at the top of page. When you view the discussion you get to see the history of the back and forth between all the people working on the entry. It can get especially entertaining for entries about legal terms - for example, the Wikipedia discussion about the term "fair use" involves, among other things, the comment from a French Wikipedia contributor that "this has been discussed in length on fr Tarquin, and the conclusion was that there was not any translation for that word and notion of fair use in French."
Reading the Discussion can be, as Gomes points out, mildly addictive. To add to the interest, a Cal Tech grad student has developed a software program called Wikiscanner that lets you see who's doing the editing.
1 comment:
Wikipedia reminds me of that old joke about the encyclopedias in the Soviet Union with the loose leaf pages.
Post a Comment