Review: Truth in numbers?

My son recently had a class project French to foreign countries (was Mexico) where the purpose was to gather a large number of facts and points of interest in a simple table format. The idea was to go online and research. While I have assumed we could have gone down in the basement and blew the dust of Funk & Wagnalls all who has not seen the light of day since the end of the 1980s, obviously comes from Wikipedia. All the information were there. Of course, my son is in the first year and it was more or less, "Just the facts Madame," for this mission. More difficult is a project of grade 12 on the life and the policy of VP-candidate John Edwards or say that the issue of abortion, but that will come later. For mathematics, sciences and the basic facts, Wikipedia is a wonderful resource for one-click shopping and links if you want to go deeper. The complex social problems human and fuzzy "big issue" science (climate change, smoking) or virtually all of history, wells "capital H" then the equation is not so simple.

I think that truth in numbers?, a brief but dense look at the culture of Wikipedia and the effect of Wikipedia on culture, eventually be a grand narrative uplifting the monoculture of social networks. This knowledge, it is individual voice, when a single "authority" becomes ubiquitous and practice. There is therefore not surprising to see Jeron Lanier, a prominent Silicon Valley critical culture Web 2.0 (and author of "You are not a Gadget") talk (or warning) to this effect. What was more curious about the film, which aims to look fair and balanced user online, mass generated, encyclopedia, but finally descends the side negative more than a few degrees, is that it is painted as a micro-digital-version of the cultural revolution China. I doubt there will be the level of physical suffering and the massive famine that may be having the time of China experts ready to string me up by the neck to put even the two together as analogy (Ever notice how if raise you Hitler), the conversation has its nadir? (I hope that this is not the case for Chairman Mao!) It seems that for the history and politics, the "average Joes" (read: young students and amateurs) who spend a lot of time to edit a host of entries in wikipedia, and thus pass through the level of power implicit in the culture of Wikipedianshave a significantly more powerful than the experts and elites voice. Thus, the elites are thrown under the bus in terms of contributing. The charge by Jimmy Wales and wikipedia culture, because they have to teach classes, books to write and tend to get rather exhausted fighting an "edit war" in this particular entry on the site. There were many articles written on the same subject, but I think that the average user and wikipedia-user is perfectly anti-expert bias current of the encyclopedia or that there is a tab version history or discussion to look at the truth of the entry. Web or no web, if it is on the page, very likely the average person to research something just takes the information at their nominal value. Of course, the pseudo-anonymity to leaves Wikipedians (known by the alias user generated) speaking head a comment on not attaching your name to something is usually the territory of the ransom Notes and Graffiti. Hyperbolic, perhaps, but as many internet things, those with free extra time can monopolize (and poisoned) discussion if they hammer away sufficiently long in the comments section. Just ask politician John Seigenthaler from politician and assistant Robert f. Kennedy JFK assassin and beyond, in handling heated and concentrated by the administrators of the page in question. The approach of laissez-faire, explicitly referenced here with the lively source of Ayn Rand that Wikipedia has been growing forward at a pace unprecedented against democracy curated to say that the slower to build Oxford English Dictionary is a fascinating comparison. Andrew Keen another expert of Web 2.0 and critical appears as the more negative, and it plays to the screen in a debate with Jimmy Wales who painted the founder of the site (or at least co-founder depending on who you talk) in which crosses the country of Wales as a ' this is what it is,' indifference to these concerns, in particular on the question of the non-expert/expert bias and the ensuing edit goods which leave many entries giving simply part of the truth, certainly not all the truth and nothing but. Wikipedia itself naturally gives the authority the general impression, even if it is not.

Certainly there is food for thought on display here and history (Wikipedia was funded by money raised from Boomis, a website page-ring whose claim to fame was the 'Babe-Aggregater' (emblemized by a photo of Sylvia Saint in full Boomis swagvous can consult to Ms. Saint on Wikipedia))(, if you do not know who she is) and the film succeeds in milk for all talking head format it is. Less interesting is a failure intro of Wales itself turned on and take photographs in India during a tour of self-promotion, or sentencing veiled suggestion that Wikipedia and its commitments (or the priorities set by Wales) led to the dissolution of his marriage. These things fall film focus of headier issues of the information age at an angle of clueless and eccentric leader. I am not opposed to the quirk of led character, the best docs are often this and God knows web-culture is a goldmine quirk (the Social Network or Startup.com for example), but it seems poorly shoe horns in 85 minutes package or simply a function of collected images. There are by my very rough estimate, an hour of good content. Apparently, the project took several years to zero in on original Director Nic Hill was to focus on, and Behind the Mask Director Scott Glosserman was introduced to help with just this thing very: Focus. I would not say that it is a complete success in the Department of Jimmy Wales, the man or how it is a metaphor for Wikipedia. Perhaps, which was perhaps not the intention. You will probably find that in the films of Wikipedia entry. Finally, it should (but rarely ever) be taken for granted that you trust your source of information independently of the web or book or Word of mouth and the history and knowledge is as much perspective that it is done. Monocultures are probably not a good thing for the race to go ahead in his own lights. But hey, give me liberty convenience or give me death - it is a snap to finish this school project.

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