Is the Wikipedia sufficiently comprehensive to replace the tangible record of the past as a subject of study? According to the Wikipedia’s description of itself as of 18:14 UST on October 29, 2006 (the entry was last updated at 15:18 UST the same day), this most dynamic of all on-line resources currently hosts more than 5 million articles (over 1.4 million entries in the English-language version alone). In all, there are 229 language editions, sixteen of which already have more than 50,000 articles each.
But, you may ask next, is the Wikipedia accurate enough? After all, there is an ongoing controversy over whether its accuracy is the equal of a traditional encyclopedia.
That question, I think, entirely misses the point. Why? Because I believe that the real significance of the Wikipedia is not its status as a compendium of information, but rather its ability to provide a record of how we see ourselves, our heritage, our current events and our culture in real-time as those perceptions evolve. And that significance clearly transcends the utility of the static, shelf-bound reference works traditionally described as encyclopedias.
Comment by jody
1 3. November 2006, 9:53 am o'clock |
Hmm. A thought-provoking article, to be sure. But the death of Archeology? I think not, Mr. Updegrove.
But first: “its ability to provide a record of how we see ourselves, our heritage, our current events and our culture in real-time as those perceptions evolve.” Correction: it provides a record of how people who own computers and use the internet and know how to edit Wikipedia see themselves, etc. The same holds with any historian (or anthropologist, sociologist, etc.)–no historian would be narrow-minded to think that an encyclopedia, online or not, democratically-edited or not, would ever provide a full or even accurate and partial snapshot of any given culture or historical moment. Shelf-bound encyclopedias contain the information that chosen people have themselves chosen to record. There’s always gaps and holes, and there will always be gaps and holes in Wikipedia as well.
But the idea to archive Wikipedia at regular intervals: brilliant. But this idea, this process, would hardly kill archeology as we know it now and/or how that discipline will operate in the future.
Comment by Melissabee
2 3. November 2006, 12:53 pm o'clock |
If how we veiw ourselves is a lie, shouldn’t someone inform us?
Comment by BigDogRMF
3 4. November 2006, 3:44 pm o'clock |
It’s interesting that after thousands of years of recording ourselves and our thoughts only to view them as static and largely unchangeable (written in stone or carved in granite, so-to-speak), we are now recording and cataloging ourselves dynamically, changing by the moment.
Also, it was usually the more educated or scholarly that made these observations. Now, the everyday man or woman can leave their mark on history. Usually, it was only the people who got caught in a glacier who could make that kind of mark.