Wikipedia is one of my favorite webpages I know. You could call it a social media library that is designed in a very transparent way. It is a very good example on well executed knowledge management in my opinion.
I know there are many people who say it cannot be used as a reliable source but I say it is the most reliable source in the world. Of course everybody could edit content but if it’s not backed by solid evidence it’s just rolled back. They don’t keep anything wrong there. If you say Wikipedia can’t be used as source then I say books can’t be used as a source either. Everybody can write a book and publish it. That does not automatically make the content valid.
I also wanted to introduce you to spaces on Wikipedia that you might not be familiar with. All these are part of the Wikimedia Foundation family and of course they are all free – that’s the original spirit of the Internet!
Wikiversity
The Wikiversity is devoted to provide learning and teaching resources. Unlike Wikipedia they therefore focus on the didactic process of learning and understanding information rather than just presenting the raw data. Recently they featured an interesting article on “Teaching and Learning Online” – considering our age and technological environment they provide good information around the subject. But of course that is just one example out of 22,000 posts, and that’s just the ones in English language.
Wikinews
Do you feel that media and news majors around you are publishing a lot of BS lately? If you like you should check out Wikinews. Over there the articles consist of compact information and clearly separate facts from opinions. The articles are written by independent users just like you and always come with referenced sister news articles and links to information sources. Wikinews is the straightest format of news consumption I have seen lately.
Wikivoyage
What if you expand the Wikipedia spirit on other forms of information sharing? Wikivoyage is an open travel guide for all kinds of places, cities and countries. Not travelling much? Pass on travel information to your peers, of which you know are traveling. Whether it’s a personal contact or a business contact, nobody ever complained about up-to-date info on their upcoming journeys. How convenient for them and how easy it is to provide. Pro tip: Check out the information on your own city. Maybe there are some things you never knew about. What are you waiting for?
More Wiki-Goodness
You want more of the community driven goodness? Check out their whole portfolio of social knowledge platform offerings.
Infographic
Are you part of the Wikipedia contributor group? I am sometimes correcting a typo here and there if I spot something but if you know something special or if you have extended knowledge on an article that currently does not hold very much information – why not contribute?
Here is a great infographic we found – of course on Wikipedia. 🙂
So .. Read or Die 😉
Photo credit: The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis / Michal Jarmoluk
