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projects
This page considers wiki projects and promoters.
It covers -
reference projects
There are a large number of wiki projects, ranging from
an astrological encyclopaedia in Polish through to recipes
for hacktivism against
woodchippers and the IMF.
Several of the most prominent projects are -
Wikipedia
- a multilingual project, initiated in 2001, to "create
a complete and accurate free content encyclopedia".
"The site is a WikiWiki , meaning that anyone,
including you, can edit any article right now by clicking
on the 'edit this page' link that appears in every Wikipedia
article"
Wiktionary
- a multilingual wiki dictionary
Susning.nu
- a Swedish encyclopaedia
Musipedia
- an 'open music encyclopedia'
Wikispecies
- "Directory of species"
An
attempt to list major wikis is here.
Nupedia
was a precursor of Wikipedia with a more academic orientation
and formal peer review structure, initiated by Jimbo Wales
and Larry Sanger (who along with Cunningham are elder
statesmen of the wiki movement). After producing only
a handful of articles it went into abeyance in 2003; the
name has since been leveraged by a different group.
In 2006 Sanger announced a new "knowledge sharing
wiki project" - Citizendium
- described as an "experimental workspace" rather
than an encyclopaedia. Sanger commented that Citizendium
would be a "progressive fork" of Wikipedia,
offering greater editorial control and elimination of
anonymous contributions
to
allow regular people a place to work under the direction
of experts, and in which personal accountability - including
the use of real names - is expected. In short, we want
to create a responsible community and a good global
citizen.
That
provoked criticism
from gadfly Clay Shirky and a response
from Sanger.
wikinews
Wikinews
launched in November 2004 with a "mission" to
create
a diverse environment where citizen journalists can
independently report the news on a wide variety of current
events
Pne
enthusiast notes that it
aims
to be to news media what Wikipedia is to encyclopedias:
a free, comprehensive and, eventually, reliable source
of information, collaboratively created by volunteers
around the planet. Wikinews explicitly allows original
reporting, making it somewhat similar to Indymedia,
while adhering to a strict Neutral Point of View policy
Another
proclaims
We
seek to create a free source of news, where every human
being is invited to contribute reports about events
large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized
from elsewhere. Wikinews is founded on the idea that
we want to create something new, rather than destroy
something old. It is founded on the belief that we can,
together, build a great and unique resource which will
enrich the media landscape.
It
is unclear how Wikinews is an advance on the immediacy
of much blogging. Genuflections
to a "strict Neutral Point of View" aside, collaborative
editing by "citizen journalists" may not result in reportage
that is timely, accurate and insightful.
For the moment Wikinews remains a vision - a somewhat
blurry vision - rather than a true alternative to 'old
media' or blogerati.
Studies include Axel Bruns' 2006 paper
Wikinews: The Next Generation of Alternative Online
News?.
wikiversity
Wikiversity
was proposed in 2005 as
a
new convergent meta-university in Asia ... to recreate
and reconnect the mental soil for quantum inventiveness
in Asia.
Proponents
claim that it
could
become much more than "yet another university"
- it has the potential for rethinking the mode of education
itself, or, at least, for furthering the model of collaborative
education that is taking hold of the progressive educative
community.
The
concept appears fashionably retro, with recurrent genuflections
to "progressive learning" in which "content
and process" are "largely dictated by the students
themselves".
We
can see collaborative work in any Wikimedia project,
particularly the Wikipedias. If this is worked well
(and it is all down to groupwork dynamics and constant
monitoring by the facilitator), the students will take
charge of the activity and it will usually have more
meaning for them than something which is learned through
the simple description of the field/subject/theory.
This touches on the experiential element to education,
requiring a reflective element on the behalf of students
and teachers, which can be done through keeping a personal
diary and sharing this selectively with the teacher
or group, or even of writing this openly, for example
in the form of a blog (or wiki-blog).
Furthermore, Wikiversity need not be confined to traditional
university programs.
Fans of Kurt Hahn, Rudolf Steiner, or AS Neill will presumably
embrace visions that
Wikiversity
does not certify student's mastery. We have no way of
assuring who is doing the work for a course. We have
no way ensuring that every course that would be required
for a degree has enough teachers to even attempt it.
We attempt to teach the same material many accredited
schools do, and to teach the material as well (or better!).
But we do not claim to be an accredited university.
It will, however be a radically different kind of learning
platform/environment/resource and its identity and scope
will be continually shaped by its students and its practitioners.
In
practice wikiversity proposals have been ignored by governments
and business. Support appears to be restricted to handful
of enthusiasts and, like some other wiki projects, it
is unlikely that there will be substantial development.
Critics have noted that providing text is not necessarily
equivalent to understanding, pointing to pre-digital projects
such as the 1950s Great Books (which was apparently
supposed to civilise mid-Western US businessmen through
a mixture of osmosis and reading groups).
Others have commented that wikiversity may indeed promote
personal growth but in a credentialist society will have
the authority of a degree received in a cereal packet
or from a diploma mill.
wikibooks
The Wikimedia Foundation's Wikibooks
initiative, hyped as potentially having "a profound
impact on the for-profit textbook and online content markets
for schools", invites users to collaboratively write/edit
online K-20 textbooks and related nonfiction.
Wikimedia director Angela Beesley commented in 2005 that
Wikibooks will work in tandem with existing textbook markets
and serve as a guidepost for industry transformation.
Wikibooks
offers the opportunity to collaborate in the process.
Learners can become teachers, as everyone is enabled
thorough the wiki model to actively participate in the
learning process. Learners will gain a lot from being
participants rather than simple consumers of knowledge.
It
is unclear whether educators and institutions have adopted
wikibooks on a large scale, despite claims that the textbooks
-
- are
"Free as in freedom, Free as in money"
- feature
"Up-to-the-minute changes" ("The very
minute a discovery or advancement is made the text can
be updated to reflect that change")
- provide
"Built-in feedback"
- offer
"Global access to educational materials"
- are
where "Academia meets the real world" ("This
is no lone professor seeking additional income, it is
a community of people ...That means textbooks that make
sense").
Judging
by additions to the Wikibooks library in October/November
2005 - a racist tract about 'White Heritage', 'Useless
Knowledge' ("Bees and dogs can smell fear")
and 'Colonizing Mars' (largely a rant about "Does
Anton Szandor LaVey Want Your Soul?") we doubt that
traditional pedagogues and publishers are quaking in their
shoes.
In 2006 German publisher Zendot announced plans to release
the German-language version of Wikipedia in a print format,
supposedly some 8,000 pages in one hundred volumes (each
to be priced at €14).
wikimags
Wikia,
Wales' commercial arm, scored an underwhelming response
to announcement of plans
for Search Wiki, a search
engine to rival Google.
Search Wiki has been promoted as "the search engine
that changes everything" and addressing
lack
of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability,
lack of transparency. Here, we will change all that.
Wikia
gained similar attention in promoting what has been hyped
as wiki "communities" or "online magazines"
in early 2007.
Wikia will feature advertising on the sites, which are
indistinguishable from blogs; contributors will not be
paid for their work. Users of Politics (replete
with 9/11 conspiracy theories for the alfoil beanie demographic),
Entertainment and Local will be responsible
for ensuring each others' entries are accurate. Wales
claims
this new media is going to invent a new era of politics.
If broadcast media brought us broadcast politics, then
participatory media will bring us participatory politics.
The
move follows Wikia's acquisition of ArmchairGM
(hyped as 'Sports 2.0'),
which focuses on sport, and launches such as Marvel Comics
Wikia.
directories, leaks and politics
Other projects include YelloWikis,
touted as "The first Open, Free and Global business
listings directory".
Our
aim is to be the biggest, friendliest, most up to date,
most predictable, least-discriminatory collection of
basic business information in the world. Compiled, edited
and checked by people like YOU!
We want to be like Yellow Pages, Dun and Bradstreet
and Hoovers all rolled into one - but open, free to
both companies and users, global, multilingual and a
lot more ecologically friendly.
... The world is full of lovely, good, helpful and nice
companies as well as bad, evil, polluting, destructive
organizations that make money from killing and hurting
people and animals. It is important that both good and
bad companies are included in the directory.
Wikileaks,
launched in 2007, is envisaged as a global whistleblowing
mechanism ...
an
uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document
leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive
regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan
Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be
of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal
unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations.
We aim for maximum political impact; this means our
interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical
people. We have received over 1.2 million documents
so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.
Anonymous
delation on a global scale poses a a range of questions.
Debatepedia
has been promoted
as
the new "wiki" encyclopedia of arguments and
debates. It empowers the general public to objectively
frame public debates as they exist in the public sphere
between the relevant players. It enables users to present
all of the *unique* pro and con arguments that have
been made by scholars, experts, leaders, etc. It also
allows editors to present the overall positions of politicians,
think-tanks, interest and activist groups, foreign leaders,
etc. It does not allow users to present their own arguments
and opinions.
Debatepedia helps resolve an outstanding question: how
can "wiki" technology be successfully applied
to politics, which is divisive by nature, when "wikis"
are a medium of "consensus". The important
insight and bridge is that a public debate and its public
arguments can be treated as documentable facts, and
that the general public can arrive at a consensus in
the framing of these facts.
Under these strict rules, the public can successfully
document a debate as if it were an encyclopedic entry,
and present all of the information necessary for any
individual (citizen or leader) to develop a calculated
and rational position. This has large social implications.
The
zany Conservapedia - "a much-needed alternative to
Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American"
- announces that "the behemoth in Job and the leviathan
in Isaiah are almost certainly references to dinosaurs",
that "like all modern animals ... kangaroos are the
descendants of [those] that were taken aboard Noah's Ark
prior to the Great Flood" and warns that
The
Democrat voting record reveals a true agenda of cowering
to terrorism, treasonous anti-Americanism, and contempt
for America's founding principles.
Presumably
a hoaxer was responsible for the Descartes entry
Renee
Descartes was a French philosopher, probably the greatest
philosopher of all time (although Kant, Aristotle and
Ayn Rand also lay claim to this title). Descartes locked
himself in a stove and meditated, arriving at the unsurprising
conclusion that nothing existed.
CreationWiki
informs readers that the world was created 6,000 years
ago.
promoters
Promoters have inevitably sought to cash in on the wiki
vogue, offering tools to facilitate wiki development by
non specialists. They include Wikia, Jot,
PBwiki,
Wetpaint, Wikispaces,
and Wiki.com
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