Life As It Goes By

As Wikipedia (and coincidentally Google) is given a new face lift, we are reminded how the progress of Internet has helped to improve our lives. The power of collaboration is clearly shown in this mighty encyclopedia, created by volunteers. An information source that is built free and meant to be free, creates the paradigm shift in the business of encyclopedia. Regular updates and editing ensures the validity of the topic over time. Simple to use, quick referencing, easy access over the Internet and consistent web presence (not known to have many connection or server problems) have given Wikipedia a great edge over its competitors.

To date, Wikipedia has 3,301,848 English articles (of the million English words), and 20,429,470 pages in total. In January 2010, it has nearly 68 million visitors.

At personal level, Wikipedia has contributed greatly to both my work and my part time studies. It helps to answer all kinds of possible questions I could have in my work and studies. Sometimes, I just needed some clarifications on a term or jargon (for software or MBA) and I knew I can grab something off Wikipedia. I almost felt like an expert instantly. This is what it should be like living in the Information Age.

What’s more is the power of links. You can never find this feature in multi-volume, hardcover and extremely encyclopedia. A primitive word for this is index, which is highly dependent on efforts put in by the author or the publishing team. Now, the knowledge from Wikipedia is built into a tree that extends to the level of depth (of the links or limited by the “capacity of your mind”).

Acceptance of Wikipedia knowledge is much higher at work than at school. Academics doubt the quality of the articles and warn students of quoting or referencing them. Instead, other websites (probably created by the professors themselves) are encouraged. For me, Wikipedia is the default starting point of any research topic. So long an external link is quoted instead of the Wikipedia article, I should get some decent scores for the assignment.

The explanation that I can find is everyone feels more assured with a product they pay for. There got to be some quality assurance behind the brand. A brand closely associated with the word “free” should be considered worthless. Well, you just give people what they desire. Charge them a price and immediately you will see the rise in value.

But the beauty of all this work is that it costs nothing and yet worth everything. I can’t live a day without Wikipedia. I have learnt more about world history from Wikipedia than my history classes. I have seen more illustrations than any textbook has shown. As a poor student struggling to make both ends meet, Wikipedia had indeed saved my academic life. Who can really afford to buy all the related materials, and read all of them? Burying your head in piles of library books doesn’t help much: you have to ensure that you always have the access to the materials you need, and for those materials that need further research, you might want to join the queue for copier. Life has been made simpler. So, just learn how to enjoy it.

Well, I know I am not the first to glorify the benefits of Wikipedia (a search on Amazon returns 3,000+ book results though quite a number already out of print). I just love it. It provides me answers to more than half of the questions I google for. I don’t really care whether it is not a dictionary (I still use it as a dictionary) or the most accurate reference. It serves me just fine. My life has been better. Nowadays, discussions among my colleagues begin like “according to Wikipedia, blah blah blah”. It doesn’t matter how it gets started. What matters is the end point or points.

I would just like to take it to another level. Not too long ago, I found a great tool called WikiTaxi. What it does is it takes Wikipedia offline by creating a database of Wikipedia snapshot. This database can then be downloaded to your PC and viewed offline with WikiTaxi. I dumped everything to my pendrive and walked around, feeling very secured with what I know or may know. The only issue is that the database file has now grown so huge that it is almost impossible to have a quick download. And having gone through the hassle of downloading it, you will realize that the images are stripped off. This might have been caused by the same tool that creates the collaborative framework of Wikipedia. The XML tags could be a great overhead. Anyway, I have learnt to live with it. Guess you could do the same. For the pampered ones, you can choose to pay for the DVD version of the offline Wikipedia or some other commercial tools.

Finally, I would like to end off with a comment to Wikipedia team. To encourage endorsement from academics, perhaps one approach is to set up a so-called “Wikipedia Labs”. I don’t mean to physically set up a lab. I mean the “Lab” should work in the same way as Wikipedia. Anyone who has done some tests or verification on the article could post his or her result in the “Lab”. If there is any controversial result, then it should be stated clearly as the conclusion. This, I hope, helps to raise the credibility of the knowledge installed in the article. By collaborating in the same way, I believe certain doubts can be removed and confidence re-installed.