W1 readings

Foreword and Preface of Wikipedia

   W1 readings said that “Why and How of Wikipedia”. There are many problems about making a free online encyclopedia. Wikipedia is one of community and collaboration makes it possible. Collaboration in Wikipedia includes culture. But writer suggest that three acceptable reason why Wikipedia is possible. First of all, encyclopedia needs expert information. On the Internet, there are experts of various field and they make some good information. Secondly, they communicate online and so it is possible to make collaboration. Online, we can very easily communicate and exchange our opinion and intelligence. Collective intelligence can broaden our perspectives all around world. The most important thing of collaboration is feedback. Finally, our different culture background can construct Wikipedia.

   I think attractive point of Wikipedia is Collective intelligence. Why has collective intelligence become such a big deal? With the rise of social media, it seems that everyone wants to get on the bandwagon. The principle behind collective intelligence is that a conclusion reached in collaboration with and from competition among multiple individuals will be more intelligent than any conclusion reached by an individual, no matter how smart. Some believe that collective intelligence is a magical concept that can be applied to any problem, not only simple but also complex. And then others believe collective intelligence efforts (like Wikipedia) will fail because the collective ultimately becomes a mob and leads to collective stupidity. In order to make collective intelligence work, we need to understand the circumstances that naturally led themselves to collaboration and collective intelligence. Then we need a set of incentives that can motivate people to participate. The incentives, of course, will vary but so far it seems incentives don't even have to be monetary. Most people that participate on Wikipedia do so because they feel the need to make that information freely available to others. The motivation in computer programming is slightly different. Most people contribute to the open source operating system because they have a sense of purpose

   Incentives for collective intelligence can even be built into systems through rewards for positive contributions as well as punishing negative ones. Abuse is one of the biggest problems open source sites face. If someone can interact with a site and be completely annoymous, there is a higher chance that people will be destructive, than in a case where one's identity is public knowledge. Actually, I wonder how can we handle some problems.