Chapter Three
What strikes you as interesting and why?
The Wiki process. As you can see from the previous chapters, I have some questions about how to maintain the accuracy of Wikipedia. I cannot believe there are only 5 paid staffers and most of the edits / updates are from volunteers that love their topics. Compared to the Nupedia Company that was also discussed it seems the risk of inaccuracy is worth taking as Nupedia never got off the group with all the hoops to jump through within the review and approval process.
Also interesting to see that Wikipedia has 4 inaccuracies to Brintannica’s 3 – however Wikipedia’s were fixed already.
How might you use these technologies in your workplace? Advantages? Disadvantages? Challenges? Benefits? Why?
I love the ability to get information into a wiki quickly, without the painful review process currently required in my company, but I still do not believe our leaders would see this benefit outweighing the risk or incorrect information. However, the self-selection, bottom-up control, and self policing argument is a good one. We have vast online resources that are a nightmare to keep updated. The process is painful and requires a number of sign-offs. I wonder if we had a wiki format in which people could self-select topics in which they had an interest/expertise and they were ultimately in charge of maintaining that topic if we may actually have more accurate information.
What are you struggling to understand and why?
Open source. I have read the success stories in the book and see how powerful this type of collaboration can be, but I still have questions about ownership and profit. I am not sure where this goes if every company adopts this mindset? Yet I also wonder what will happen to the companies that do not embrace it.
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