On 5/5/06, Cheney Shill halliburton_shill@yahoo.com wrote:
Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/5/06, Cheney Shill wrote: > Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a socially defined collection of original research. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which subverts the usual definition of an encyclopedia and expands far beyonds the bounds of typical encyclopedias because of its social model, one based on collective authorship. You can't get around the social interaction, it is what makes the entire thing work. I should think such is fairly obvious.I think "free", the assumption of accuracy that comes with "encyclopedia", and the assumption that reasonable people will be reviewing the changes without requiring days of debate over easily verifiable knowledge is more obvious. Unless we're discussing trolls, you'll have to provide support for your opinion. How many people arrive at Wiki as a result of a "social interaction" or "chat" search on Google? Has that even been suggested in a motto of the day? That's a reasonable argument for mysapce's success, not an encyclopedia who's goal is to share the sum of the world's knowledge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About I'll respond on the rest later.~~~~Pro-Lick
I still think you've entirely missed the point of what I mean by "social interaction." Wikipedia works because people come together, contribute information, edit information, squabble over it, have little arguments, e-mail each other, organize list serves, organize chats, use elaborate guidelines and rule structures to get what they want, etc. etc. etc. Wikipedia's content is produced through these interactions between users, who are organized and regulated by the software which runs Wikipedia, by their shared (and not shared) values and norms, and by a complex set of regulations, stated ideals, and bureaucratic procedures which have been formulated over time. Wikipedia succeeds to the degree that it does because these regulations of user activity are, ideally, designed to encourage contribution, discourage the effects of vandalism, and weed out bad content.
All of this would fall under "social interaction" in the standard definition. If the "social" is what is confusing you, you might look at our article on [[social interaction]] which goes into a little more detail on this, if you are interested in pursuing this further. I think I've exhausted my ability for explaination it at the moment.
FF