Which Way for Wikipedia?
Posted by Marieke Guy on 19th February 2009
Do you have a Wikipedia entry for in your museum, library or archive institution? The most likely answer is yes, if it isn’t then maybe you need to thing about getting one?
As the Wikipedia site explains:
Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project. The name “Wikipedia” is a portmanteau (a combination of portions of two words and their meanings) of the words wiki (a type of collaborative Web site) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.
Wikipedia entries are easy to create and provide high-profile information that is Google-friendly. It’s a great way to get your users to know more about your institution. Wikipedia is collaboratively created and so also allows the community to enhance and develop content.
Content Control
In the past Wikipedia has suffered at the hands of vandals. Oner of the most prominent cases to date was journalist John Seigenthaler’s entry in Wikipedia. One user edited the entry to claim Seigenthaler was connected with the Kennedy assassination, an allegation that Seigenthaler obviously took very seriously.
This week, after a trail run in the German language Wikipedia, Wikipedia has announced that there will be more stringent controls over the biographies of living people. In a recent BBC Radio 5 interview Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales explained that they were planning to implement a software change that would mean certain areas of the site would be reviewed before they went live.
Such a move by Wikipedia might lead many to ask will increasingly more control taken over content? Will the site eventually be locked down? Is this moving into the arena of censorship? What will be the implications of this be for those of us interested in the changing role the Internet plays in our culture?