oxford university

Wikis knock­ing on the iron gates of Oxford

Andrew Keen on New Media – Recently, Inter­net com­ment­ator Andrew Keen was at Oxford Uni­ver­sity together with Wiki­pe­dia co-​​founder Larry Sanger to debate whether “the inter­net is the future of know­ledge”. Keen notes that it was ironic for the dis­cus­sion – includ­ing dis­cus­sion of whether the inter­net was demo­crat­ising the cre­ation and dis­tri­bu­tion of know­ledge – to have occurred at Oxford, a rep­res­ent­at­ive of the “ivory tower busi­ness model for know­ledge”. He notes that estab­lish­ment of Oxford Uni­ver­sity by a wealthy landowner con­trasts with the ori­gins of Wiki­pe­dia, and sites like Wiki­pe­dia and Cit­izen­dium are driv­ing the adop­tion of wikis, pod­casts and blogs, even by tra­di­tional know­ledge com­pan­ies. Keen found the response of Oxford fac­ulty and stu­dents to the demo­cratic poten­tial of the inter­net enthu­si­astic and “any­thing but snooty”.

Other men­tions

Other recent men­tions in online media include:

• Myan­mar or Burma? Wiki­pe­dia debates – Wiki­pe­di­ans have been grap­pling with Burma’s name, which is a “com­plic­ated issue” accord­ing to one academic.
• Toronto is #1 (On Wiki­pe­dia) – User:Bearcat, from Toronto, is the (human) user with the highest num­ber of edits on Wiki­pe­dia, based on the latest rankings.
• Cyber ban­dit sab­ot­ages top cop – The Wiki­pe­dia art­icle on Aus­tralian Fed­eral Police chief Mick Keelty has seen a spate of non­sensical van­dal­ism recently, and is now semi-​​protected.
• The Back­stage Sights, the Locker Room Scents – The “Wiki­pe­dia test” for tour guides: would you have got­ten more “charm, energy and know­ledge” if you had brought a prin­tout from Wiki­pe­dia instead?
• Wiki gone wild – This author claims that Wiki­pe­di­ans tend to be anti-​​Israel while pre­tend­ing to be object­ive, for example, in the treat­ment of the term “occu­pied ter­rit­ory”.

From the Wiki­pe­dia Sign­post.