IP Democracy: Everything's Coming Up Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the bold online encyclopedic experiment that is now among the top twenty web sites in the world, is suddenly grabbing the limelight. First, the New Yorker presented this excellent perspective piece by Stacy Shiff on the rise of the user-edited site.

Then, Steven Colbert pushed his audience to change reality by urging them to edit Wikipedia’s elephant entries (and Colbert himself apparently edited an entry on George Washington during live taping of his show.) Here’s the video of this hilarious stunt.

Today Dave Weinberger and others are blogging from Wikimania, the annual Wikipedia conference. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, gave the kick-off talk this morning (MP3 here) noting that even controversy doesn’t dim Wikipedia’s standing. Page views at Wikipedia tripled after a public attack on the credibility of the site by Lawrence Siegenthaler.

Wales announced that Wikipedia will extend its successful wisdom of the crowds to new ventures, including Wikiversity, a center for the creation and sharing of educational materials and Wikiwyg, a WYSIWYG interface that will make it easier for tech-challenged experts to contribute to the site.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on August 4, 2006 2:48 PM to IP Democracy