WIKIPEDIA AND ELEPHANTS

In doing some research and digging around in Wikipedia (did I really need to link that?), I started thinking [again] about the power of tools like Wikipedia and what they represent in the age of New Media.

Please, please, if you are at all interested in topics like New Media, "phenomena" like Wikipedia, or are wondering what in the crap everyone is talking about when they say things like "Web 2.0," go and get Clay Shirky's book: Here Comes Everybody. Seriously, do it now. I'd lend it to you, but I have this horrible habit of starting books with a voracious appetite only to find something else to do or read when I'm about halfway through. That, and I really don't want to lose track of this book.

So anyway, reading some interesting articles on Wikipedia led me to the desire to actually write something. I read through some pages that I was pretty sure wouldn't exist, such as the entry for Elko, Nevada (my home town), and decided I'd write one for myself. Cahlan Sharp. A Wikipedia entry on myself, what could be more self glorifying?

Problem is, I wasn't the first one with that idea. No, there isn't an article on me yet. I got as far as checking the Wikipedia guide to first-time articles and realized that I was in the wrong.

Commandment six: thou shalt not write articles about thyself or thy friends (paraphrased, of course).

Makes sense though, right? Not that I couldn't have tried to do it anyway, but the point is that my intentions were all wrong. What if every user or peruser of Wikipedia decided to make an article about himself/herself?

What's that? Oh, right. It's called MySpace; it's called Facebook. I got caught up in the excitement of sharing coupled with a selfish desire to think I was important enough to warrant the general populace's attention. What a jerk!

I also remembered reading an article a long time ago about how Stephen Colbert decided to take a jab at Wikipedia by inspiring his users to edit the Elephant article to read that the population had doubled in the last six years. What a fun discussion that spawned.

Straight from Shirky's book, in chapter 5 entitled "Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production" (the entire chapter is about Wikipedia):

Skepticism about Wikipedia's basic viability made some sense back in 2001; there was no way to predict, even with the first rush of articles, that the rate of creation and the average quality would both remain high, but today those objections have taken on the flavor of the apocryphal farmer beholding his first giraffe and exclaiming, "Ain't no such animal!" Wikipedia's utility for millions of users has been settled; the interesting questions are elsewhere.

I'd love to write that entire chapter in here.

I wonder if the Great Wikipedia Debate hasn't progressed a little from the "Ain't no such animal" exclamation to a phase of teenage boys first discovering they can make prank phone calls (Colbert).

Now I think we'll start to see and recognize even more usefulness come from tools like Wikipedia.