Project4
Last modified by Holger Dick on 2010/09/28 13:50
Project-4: Wikipedia versus KNOL: Different Approaches to Create Interesting Encyclopdias
| Site | Objectives | Interesting Unique Aspects |
| Wikipedia | web-based collaborative multilingual encyclopedia | single, collaborative, and verifiable article on every topic; consensus emerges |
| KNOL | a library of articles by recognized experts in specific domains | authors take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews and comments ; readers can provide feedback and comments;authority rests primarily with the author |
Objectives:
- Study these different environments and determine their strengths and weaknesses (a starting point is the table show below).
- Consider the different viewpoints – for example for contributors, for readers, as a process, as a product.
- reflect and assess from criteria such as:
- trust
- being up to date
- coverage
- amount of irrelevant information
- Try to
- Modify / Extend — or even better: create a new one — article in Wikipedia and follow what happens to it
- Find articles about the same subject in KNOL and Wikipedia and analyze how they evolved over time (in KNOL not so much within one article but from article to article)
Starting Points:
1) some aspects for comparison
| Wikipedia | KNOL |
| collaborative work (consisting of several pages, all created collaboratively) | a collection of individual works |
| All participants edit for themselves | *can* have multiple authors, but it is originally created by an individual |
| homogenization effect of Wikipedia (variant opinions tend to get flattened together into a single consensus) | very strong point-of-view; show the space of possible interpretations on a given topic |
| Trust: Nobody checks the authorship list of articles nor do people really check on the edit history | Trust: written by known authors; trust-basis for credibility assessments. |
| one article per topic | multiple perspective on a topic (e.g. evolution: evolutionary biologists, radical Christian evangelicals, old-school Darwinists |
2) comparing Wikipedia and KNOL to Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta
| Site | Objectives | Interesting Unique Aspects |
| Encyclopedia Britannica | regarded as the most scholarly of encyclopaedias; written by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert contributors | The online Britannica won the 2005Codie award for "Best Online Consumer Information Service"; The Britannica has received criticism, especially as editions become outdated |
| Encarta | to encourage learning and to respect the role of parents in their children's education | Discontinued in March 2009 by Microsoft |
Sponsors: Holger Dick and Gerhard Fischer
