This week I will take a look at the second half of "The World and Wikipedia, How We are Editing Reality" by Andrew Dalby. In the first half of this book we examined many of the pro's and con's of Wikipedia including its reliability, its ease of use, and the ability to pool all of our brains together and create an "ultimate" source of information. As we have seen however, there are many things that contribute to the negativity of this source including the ease of people posting onto pages that may not know the truth about the subject they are writing about.
The second half of this book describes a few different things including why people don't trust Wikipedia, why we will continue to use it, and also why people love Wikipedia. Many people don't trust Wikipedia, namely professors and other professionals. The reason for this is obvious, many of these "upper level educated people" had to pursue research the hard way, that is, by going into a library and reading books, as well as conducting interviews themselves. However for the generation of those studying now Wikipedia is so easy that in many cases, it will suffice for our research purposes.
The first subject, "Why we love it", is a very long chapter in which Dalby provides a variety of different reason's why we love Wikipedia. The one that resonates most with me is when he says, "We love it because it's a virtual nation, or rather a virtual world" (120). He provides us with examples of people that say they enjoy contributing to it, and also that people enjoy discussing the articles and varying degrees of opinions on the website. Just like with Facebook, and as we have discussed in class, the internet is creating a place where we are becoming more isolated, however out of that isolation people are seeking a sense of community and Wikipedia provides that to its users.
Another thing that I found very interesting is that, in the section titled, "Why you don't trust Wikipedia" is when Dalby writes "In general... articles get longer because it's easier to go on writing than to compress what one has written... It's easier... to write than to edit what others have written" (181). This fact alone contributes to one of the major flaws of the website. Often, popular articles become huge pages and this is because of this fact. This also sometimes results in differing opinions residing on the same page. With so much information from many different sides of the argument it becomes clear that people are not sure what to believe. Dalby provides the example Sarah Palin's page, who had nearly 7,000 edits in two weeks. These edits show the constantly evolving nature of the articles and because of that it is hard to decipher what to believe and what not.
Overall I think Dalby's book was a great resource. The chapter names were obvious, "Why we love it, Why you don't trust it". These chapter names could be understood by any one with a knowledge of the internet, however, the depth that Dalby goes into in his explanations is greater than any that one could create on their own. After reading this book I feel I have a much greater understanding for the world of Wikipedia and the pro's and con's that come with it. Ultimately, this book has helped form my new perspective on Wikipedia, which is that it is a viable resource. I believe that despite the editing, numerous posters, and other factors, Wikipedia has created a world where anyone can get a basic understanding of any subject in the world almost. And like Dalby says, "I will trust Wikipedia" based on a "per article basis" by "[judging] each article for reliability on its merits" (220).
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