WEEK3 Creating Knowledge through Sharing Knowledge

     The Gutenberg Project is one of the oldest examples of sharing digital content to a community, without promoting a price tag. It originates from the University of Illinois that started a collection of research papers and other e-texts in 1971, now there are thousand of e-books available as well. The idea of community-based knowledge and software was adopted by many leading to the creation of OpenAccess, a platform to share scientific papers, Linux, a software that any user can develop and contribute to the community or wikis, a website to provide information that anybody can edit.

              Ward Cunningham initiated a project in 1995 at his university, to allow members of the community to write and edit information posted on a platform. This led to the creation of wiki’s. Wikis are created for multiple purposes, some write biographies, or used as a company-internal information platform, as well as a “free learning platform” or just as a source of information. The most common wiki is probably Wikipedia, with millions of readers every single day and thousands of active users, new articles constantly emerge, and others are constantly updated. Whilst having many readers Wikipedia is never recommended as a source, as anybody could edit the page and the content is often generated by secondhand source. Not every article has been proofread, and therefore the information on a Wikipedia page could be completely falsified. However, it can be used to create a general picture of situations. Additionally, if information is legitimate its source is often cited, and one can use that source to verify the given data.

              More reliable are wikis embedded in communities, or that can only be edited by a limited group of members. Within university systems that enables for internal information not to be falsified by outsiders, therefore always having a greater guarantee of being correct. Wikis have been proven to work as a study platform, not only within universities but as a separate body “Wikiversity”. The goal was to create sources other than textbooks to use for studying, wanting to create learning communities or groups and promote the method of “learning by doing”. With opportunities to contribute to the knowledge, creating a WikiJournal or participating in debates (WikiDebates), there were many ways to study on the platform. Wikiversity is available in seventeen different languages, making a certain education available for many, as it is free of cost.

              Wikis have many different applications and allow each user to personally interact with the platform by either contributing to its content or using the existing texts. The extensive use of wikis in different areas shows that it is an effective tool to collaborate with other. Even though there is always the possibility of the editor introducing misinformation into the system, as an edit is never final, it can be corrected afterwards. The consistency in the systems use also shows that although wrongful content might be posted, generally the system successful.

 

(Only Wikipedia was used as a source)

 

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