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December 19, 2005
Wikipedia and its Implications for Web Identity
The above is an excellent albeit sweeping and short summary of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to. For those of you who haven't clicked on the article yet, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that consists of hundreds of thousands of webpage articles about almost any topic. And the trick to its breadth and depth is that simply by clicking on the 'Edit' button, you can contribute to the article, expanding or correcting it (only registered users can create new articles...).
As the article points out, there has recently been some controversy over the actual content contained within Wikipedia's open doors; because anyone can edit it, someone could write virtually anything. They could say that the Great Wall of China isn't actually in China, or that plants need soda pop to thrive. Wikipedia's supporters counter this by touting the site's rabid band of watchful volunteers, who rountinely monitor changed content, and update or correct it almost instantly (just see the Revision History for 'Abortion').
Some of this controversy has been abated by only allowing registered users to create new articles, removing some anyonymity from the article creation process and introducing a sort of reputation system into the mix. On one hand, identity and reputation is good on the Web, allowing authors to take credit for their work and readers to take confidence in knowing who is writing what they read. This is the basis for future Web research; one major arm of work is the Semantic Web, the ultimate goal of which is trust in web content. Over time, readers (or at least those searching for incorrect or purposely-misaligned content) will be able to sort out the good writers from the bad.
But on the other hand, one reason the Web has exploded in popularity is that people could add anything to it while being a 'nobody', and readers judged content for content's sake, not by who was writing it. With identity and reputation (and assumably popularity), suddenly the popularly known person's content would get read more often than the unpopular, unknown person's work, just by the name of the author. Content would no longer be judged by its substance alone. Maybe my fears are overblown however, as blog content (clearly not as well known as say The New York Times) has become a major news source without accredited journalists behind them.
Again, i'm all for trust and trustworthiness on the Web, as the past decade of development has been quite chaotic. But as people add certain levels of maturity to it, i wonder at the pure benefits of identity, and can't help but see positives to being a 'nobody' in some cases. The Web shouldn't take on attributes of the regular world just because it can; let's stop and think about what will be gained and what will be lost. The Web is its own medium; let's let it be itself and stand up on its own two feet.
* sorry, that title came out alot more bland and techy than i wanted it to...
Posted by MaTT at December 19, 2005 11:06 PM