Hey! My name is Emily Cohn and I am a sophomore Communication major. I am from New York City, where I have lived my entire life. However, I absolutely love Ithaca for I find that it was a truly unique spirit that could never be found in a big city. One of my past professors tried to describe the spirit of Ithaca in a humorous story. He told us that the United States in the 1960’s was analogous to a giant game of musical chairs. When the music stopped and most of the products of the so-called “hippie” generation settled, however, a small chunk of them found themselves stranded in Ithaca, never quite emerging from the decade of tie-dye, liberalism, and folk music. Aside from my fascination with Ithaca, I love to read and write. I am a staff writer for the Cornell Daily Sun, which I enjoy because it allows me to see the University from a different perspective and exposes me to things I would otherwise not see.
One internet-related phenomenon I am interested in is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia in which users can actively retrieve and edit its content. Many people criticize Wikipedia for its open nature because it fosters the generation of falsified or biased information. However, the website’s overwhelming success suggests that most people are not deterred by the site’s potential inaccuracies. For example, the English Wikipedia contains entries for over 609 million words, which is about 15 times more than those found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. It is Wikipedia’s overwhelming success as a reliable reference source that fascinates me.
I think Wikipedia falls into two of Wallace’s environments of the internet. Firstly, Wikipedia certainly falls into the category of the World Wide Web as a self-published library. Wikipedia can be considered to be a catalog of references, which Wallace describes as a quality of the Web. Additionally, however, Wikipedia can be seen as an asynchronous discussion forum because each encyclopedia entry is an interminable conference between users, who all have to equal opportunity to contribute their knowledge.
1 comment:
Emily-
I found your query about Wikipedia fascinating, especially since I never really thought about what a phenomenon it is. I have always taken it for granted as a resource that’s always been there, but it’s a relatively new information source. I sometimes forget that (potentially) much of the data is falsified and that it is not always considered a credible source.
There were a few questions that popped into my head whilst reading your post. Why do people spend time contributing to an online encyclopedia, especially since they don’t get paid for it? How did Wikipedia become such an extensive encyclopedia? Why would people choose to falsify data on such a popular site? How much do people who actively use Wikipedia as a reference know about the type of content they are extracting? Do people consider Wikipedia as valuable as an established encyclopedia, such as Encyclopedia Britannica? Why do professors recommend that information extracted from Wikipedia not be included in papers?
I really enjoyed reading your post, and look forward to reading more!
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