Wikipedia, an emerging space filled with copious amounts of knowledge
Well I’ve reached my third blog and I’m feeling good. I’m slowly getting used to discussing the unit themes of KCB201 and this week I’ll be discussing the wonders of Wikipedia. I am also watching television, but the brilliant thing about TV is that you can use the add breaks of your favorite show to do Uni work 
. Although I’m not really watching anything on TV, I actually just enjoy a little bit of background noise.
Ok, that’s enough jabbering about TV, now I will jabber on about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an emerging knowledge space. Wikipedia is an open, collaborative space, where people can create, collaborate, and produce information and knowledge within a web 2.0 format. Wikipedia is the most successful online encyclopedia. However Wikipedia is not your standard traditional encyclopedia, the key difference being the ability for users to create knowledge and information. Anyone can edit and create pages on Wikipedia.
This key aspect of Wikipedia has created a entrenched criticism of Wikipedia. Its reliability and credibility is constantly criticized and it if you were to ever reference Wikipedia on a university essay it would definitely come back with an ‘F’ plastered all over it. But is Wikipedia really that bad. I personally find Wikipedia very useful. As I study law, I am given cases to read every week. Before I read the case I give a quick search on Wiki, most of the time someone has written about the case, there is a brief outline of the facts and what the outcome was. It isn’t in-depth, however I can understand it and it gives me the basic understanding of the topic which I then use as I research more thoroughly.
So is the information on Wikipedia wrong or right and who knows. Most of the time I find Wikipedia objective and factual, I do agree it shouldn’t be used in academic writing, but I think it is a useful knowledge base and that it is credible. It could be argued that it is more credible than that of an article written by an academic, Wikipedia entries go through the most rigorous editing, we edit them. Imagine if you gave an essay on World War II to everybody with access to the internet to check before you handed it in. It would receive the most intense editing and criticism this is what happens on Wikipedia. Entries are edited and changed constantly. The truth is being constantly questioned; this idea demonstrates how credible Wikipedia can be.
Although I do acknowledge that this is an optimistic and somewhat utopian ideal of Wikipedia and in many cases the content of an article can be completely incorrect and fabricated. This is the problem with Wikipedia it has such potential to be an infinite source of objective knowledge but this is impossible with humans as our minds are all completely different and our thoughts and opinions will always be slightly different from others. What is the truth to some isn’t to others.
I like how Wikipedia as a form of new media as brought up philosophical questions about what is the truth, of subjectivity of objectivity, of the meaning of knowledge.
