Competing against Free Wikipedia Faces down Encyclopedia Britannica The record a

Question

Competing against Free Wikipedia Faces down Encyclopedia Britannica The record and movie industries are not the only in- dustries to find themselves affected by free access to their products. Encyclopedia Britannica faces chal- lenges by a nonprofit competitor that provides its services without charge or advertising, Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia depends on volunteers to create and edit original content under the condition contributors provide their work without copyright.

Who would work for free? During its cre- ation in the 19th century, the Oxford English Dictionary editors solicited word articles and ref- erences from the general public. In the 20th cen- tury, AOL.com found thousands of volunteers to monitor its chat rooms. Amazon.com coaxed more than 100,000 readers to post book reviews on its retail Web site. Outdoing them all in the 21st cen- tury, Wikipedia published its 1,000,000th English language article in March 2006. Wikipedia in- cludes more than 2,000,000 articles in more than 200 languages, all created and edited by more than 4,800,000 million users.

Can Wikipedia compete on quality? Wikipedia provides its users with both editing and moni- toring tools. This allows users to self-police. Wikipedia also uses voluntary administrators who block vandals, temporarily protect articles, and manage arbitration processes when disputes arise. A paper published by Nature in December 2005 evaluated 50 Wikipedia articles and found an aver- age of four factual errors per Wikipedia article as compared with an average of three errors per arti- cle in the Encyclopedia Britannica. More signifi- cantly, Wikipedians (as the volunteers call themselves) corrected each error by January 2006. Alexa.com rated Wikipedia.com as the 17th most visited Web site on the Internet, while Britannica.com came in 2,858th place (Yahoo and Google ranked in first and second place).

Wikipedia has already built on its success. In addition to offering foreign language encyclope- dias, it also provides a common media archive (commons.wikimedia.org), a multilingual diction- ary (www.wiktionary.org), and a news service (www.wikinews.org).

One of the latest Wikipedia projects is Wikiver- sity, a Web site devoted to free learning, Web educa- tion, open educational resources, and collaborative learning communities (www.wikiversity.com).

A) How does Wikiversity compare as an educa- tional resource to traditional colleges and schools? How would a degree earned online from wikiversity.com be viewed compared with a degree earned in a traditional learning environment? What learning resources are at Wikiversity that you can use to further your education right now?

Explanation / Answer

Wikiversity is an upcoming educational project that provides learning resource such as learning material and learning tools. It is still in the early stages of development. It is not fully developed. It is helpful to some extent as an educational resource to traditional colleges and schools.

Wikiversity is still has to get accreditation from any recognized degree granting committee. So a degree earned online from wikiversity.com cannot be considered valid. A degree earned through traditional learning environment is more valid than any online educational environment.

There are a various number of resources available at Wikiversity that can be used to further education. Different people place different learning material on the Wikiversity site that can be helpful for anyone looking for such resource. The resource on Wikiversity can be available to any one free of cost.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse C
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.