The Encyclopedia Reloaded

         by Billy Mabray      December 2004 

Recently, I needed to verify some facts for an article I was writing, so I looked it up in my encyclopedia. While there, I noticed something – a fact in the encyclopedia that I knew was wrong. I started to correct it, but before I could, someone else fixed it. Has this ever happened to you?

Of course, my encyclopedia is a little different. It’s the Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that is written, edited, and updated by thousands of volunteers. As I type this, Wikipedia has almost half a million articles in over a hundred languages on a vast array of subjects. Anyone can create or edit a page without getting permission from anyone else. It is amazing how quickly it gets updated – moments after any major event you will be able to find information about it on Wikipedia. It is also surprisingly accurate. Most of the articles found there include citations that tell where the information was found.

What makes this work is the wiki software. Wiki Websites allow anyone to edit any page. It makes it easy for a large group of people to collaborate on writing. Once you learn the wiki format, you can make pages look just like you want, with tables, lists, headings, and even graphics. Any word can be made a link to a wiki page, and if that page doesn’t exist, then clicking the link will take you to the edit page so you can create it.

You might think such a thing would be complete chaos. After all, if anybody can edit pages, what stops someone from coming along and covering the site with virtual graffiti? It turns out this is not as big a problem as you would expect. It happens, but it usually gets corrected within minutes. Wiki software tracks all changes to each page, so if a page is defaced you can just revert to the previous version. Thousands of editors quickly notice and fix any typos and errors. You can even subscribe to get notices when there are changes to pages you are interested in. Because of all this, the incidence of vandalism is surprisingly low.

The Wikipedia can be found at http://www.wikipedia.org. It’s a handy reference tool, it’s free, and it’s easily the most up-to-date encyclopedia you will find anywhere.

Billy Mabray and his wife, Angela, own Smart Goat, a local software
development and Web design business.  They are members of the CCOKC. Comments or questions on the article are welcome and can be addressed to:   billy@smartgoat.com.