Wikipedia Analysis pt 2

This week we were supposed to read the second half of Andrew Dalby’s “The World and Wikipedia: How we are editing reality”. The second half of the book picks up where the first left off - it’s very interesting to read. I think it’s a break away from the norm for me to be reading such current texts - too much Shakespeare during high school, perhaps. That said, the second half of the book is a bit more interesting than the first. In the beginning, he talks briefly about the history of the idea and etymology of the first encyclopedias, as well as their successors into the current Wikipedia and its competitors. The most talked about of these competitors is the Encyclopædia Britannica. It is one of the world’s largest and currently the world’s most respected scholarly English encyclopedia. It is throughout the book talked about as if it is already dead, a staple of an era gone by. In many ways, this is true. The model of full-time, paid editors and scholarly contributors can not keep up with the quantity of writing the collaborative Wiki software can amass. However, this model has a few major flaws. The idea that anyone can edit or create new articles allows for new contributions to be made incredibly quickly, which lets Wikipedia become a fairly reputable news source. However, it also means that it can easily become susceptible to vandalism. While Wikipedia has some efforts in place to curb vandalism, some will always fall through the cracks. As Dalby writes, “Vandalism could be quite largely prevented by insisting that users register before editing. but that’s an extremely bad idea because great numbers of useful edits of all kinds, including the first reports of many major events, come from users who can’t log in, don’t want to, don’t dare to, or think they haven’t time.” This leaves Wikipedia at an impasse. This is largely the reason why Wikipedia is typically not respected by academia as a scholarly resource. However, this will eventually change. Wikipedia is gaining more respect every day, and will eventually kill all of its competitors. It is at that time that Wikipedia will be used in universities and studies.