Sunday, September 21, 2008

Wiki-collaboration

Dynamic collaboration in an open wiki's biggest weakness in my mind is that at any one moment they may contain inaccurate information. While I believe that these errors for the most part would be corrected fairly quickly if anything in a wiki is being cited in a paper or presentation you cannot guarantee the information in the wiki at any moment. Maybe that is not a bad thing but the way I see it it compromises its fidelity a little bit.

It seems that the biggest strength is the ability for virtually anyone to contribute to the wiki and improve it. Many more perspectives can be represented and biases can be limited. Information can be added as it changes or evolves which gives the opposite of what I mentioned above, the ability at any moment to get correct, up-to-date information.

Overall the positives outweigh the negatives and the negatives found in "closed-content," print materials seem to be much greater that in open content where many experts, and people are contributing.

I made a few improvements to the Wikipedia article on the Missionary Training Center by adding some information on the international MTCs, specifically the Brazil MTC. I also changed the total capacity because it was too high. We'll see if anyone changes it back.

2 comments:

opencontent said...

So the greatest strength is also the greatest weakness... Can you think of a way to retain this strength while removing, containing, or isolating the weakness? Or are these two inextricably linked?

Shawn said...

My one thought is that there is strength in numbers. Particularly, if behind those numbers there are a bunch or credible people who feel a educational responcibility to ensure accurate information. But the question does arise in my mind as to the citing of these kinds of sources to other educators or professionals. How do you know if that information will be there a year later? Or if it will represent the same thing. The knowledge in technology and the sciences expand very quickly

Search This Blog