On 24/05/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/05/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/23/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://liveserials.blogspot.com/2007/05/uksg-write-up-wikipedia-problem.html
I don't really get a great idea of what they MEAN by that phtase, though ...
It's entirely unclear ... that public participation ruins their business model? In which case look out for them as a threat in the future?
I think you're inferring far too much here. This is, really, nothing at all to do with Microsoft or Google; it's to do with the web and its users.
The link is talking about a meeting of the UKSG, the United Kingdom Serials Group, who are a perfectly staid and respectable group of librarians. It simply so happened that one of the talks was given by a guy from MS, talking about their products and Google's.
Now, pause for a second. Serials librarians. The context here is identifying and retrieving information, discussing search tools. Hence all the statistics abour search groups, content available, etc.
The "Wikipedia problem" - well, talk to half a dozen librarians or teachers, you'll know exactly what they'd say if you asked what the "Wikipedia problem" is. It's ubitquitous, it's pervasive, it's not very good compared to a lot of other stuff out there. It's the same problem *every other person* who worries about Wikipedia is concerned with - that peoples behaviour online is to google for something, take the first result uncritically; if it's something researchable, that first result is probably served up by us; they'll take it and read it and never think to check it.
This isn't news. It's the problem we've known about ever since we became a runaway popular success - we get given far much more uncritical credence than we deserve, and people are hurting themselves through it.