Wikipedia Vs Britannica: Update

I love going to work early these days (though I can assure you it's not for the love of the office) simply because the internet connection seems a little faster, and I can catch up with stuff to post for my readers (hello again, you three).

Thursday sure comes up fast when you've got mountains to move and water to walk on. In between marking, setting exam questions and trying to come up with a suitable paper for the Games In Education symposium later this year, I find this ongoing debate between Britannica and Wikipedia (Link) highly interesting (for context, click on this link).

Following the articles and rebuttals, it comes across as highly ironic that in an age where the distribution of information (and subsequent distillation into knowledge) can happen at the speed of thought one of the co-founders of Wikipedia himself is giving everyone some reasons why this new "faith-based encyclopaedia" can NEVER, in actuality, become one.

One of the major points he raises is of course, the perception of credibility. By having such an open, editable (in net speak "living") document it raises certain issues regarding governance and authenticity. Regular media have been quick to highlight this seeming weakness (Link) and they have certainly not been remiss in criticising what they perceive to be serious faults within Wikipedia.

I for one, think that in no case at all should any ONE source of information be allowed to eclipse other possible ones. The fluid nature of information in this era requires timeliness as WELL as accuracy, something traditional Encyclopaedias simply may not be equipped to do; therefore I was delighted to see this compact, elegant response (Link) to another article on one person's doubts about the whole thing (Link), which in my mind raises several important questions of its own.

At the end of the day, these different sources of information should act to complement, not antagonise or replace. Wikipedia's fast updates allows it to stay abreast of current news, as evidenced by the recent Tsunami coverage (Link) but Britannica and its ilk will continue to provide authoritative, peer written articles that serve a more scholarly need. Is it fair to say that one should supplant the other? Not at all, in my opinion.

As we move further into what some call the information age, it is high time we celebrate our advantage of "context". Sources like Wikipedia allow us to get a glimpse of the unadulterated big picture AS it happens, allowing us to prefigure the contextual content long before the regular channels get it.

Perhaps that's the most important bit of all.

Context.