Friday, October 21, 2011
Editing Wikipedia at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
NYTimes.com: Titled “Wikipedia! The Musical!,” the event is part of Wikipedia Loves Libraries, a series that encourages active users of the online encyclopedia to engage with established cultural institutions and make use of their resources.
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8 comments:
Wikipedia's continued prominence in the information age is comforting in a world where much of the information we consume comes from an ever shrinking number of sources. Wikipedia has, of course embraced the crowd sourcing method of getting things done. It is encouraging to see that they are making a concentrated effort to increase both the reliability of their articles and the depth of information provided in them through these partnerships with libraries and other cultural institutions. There are many many years of history, information, and culture that exists to be digitized and spread around the world and every minute we are creating more. Of course, it is vitally important that we keep the originals as well. There is a lot you can learn from examining an original manuscript that cannot be found from even a faithful scan.
I agree that this is also encouraging to hear about: Wikipedia is such a widely used source, we forget that at times it is extremely faulty- who knows whose editing our information anymore! We have trusted technology so much that we overlook that there are people behind that technology who are not perfect, therefor we cannot idolize such sources. I feel that the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is doing is very justifiable, useful, and thing for the public to use.
Completely agree-this sounds awesome! I almost wish I'd gone home for the weekend to participate. I've looked up shows on wikipedia countless times, and I'm always dismayed when I see incomplete or incorrect information. On the contrary, there's never been a piece of information on a show that the NYPL Performing Arts Library hasn't been able to find for me. A perfect team effort, and one I hope will yield some awesome results as far as making musical theatre knowledge more organized and accessible for the world!
This sounds like a great event! Wikipedia is such a useful tool, and although many people use it incorrectly as their only source of information, it is really great for people who use it to get the most basic facts and as a starting point for research projects. It is great to see such a prominent institution such as the New York Public Library acknowledging the importance of Wikipedia and taking it seriously enough to dedicate its efforts to improving the information it provides. This article also contributes great information about the give and take relationship people should have with Wikipedia and the relationship they encourage people to have with it.
After taking a class that required bringing a lacking Wikipedia article up to Good Article status, I've been conditioned to have faith in the research and accuracy of Wikipedia articles, at least those on academic subjects or those with significant amounts of tangible evidence to point to. However, learning to edit effectively and efficiently on Wikipedia had a steep learning curve, and the retention rate for good editors is very low. I applaud the effort to educate those who could be considered subject matter experts to edit and improve articles about our industry, and then opening up resources that will aid them in their work. I'm intrigued to see what they come up with.
I think this is an ingenious way for the library to use interested parties in order to update information on wikipedia. I am sure they are not staffed with enough people to monitor all of the sites and update them. So why not make it into a "musical" adventure where interested parties can come research and update entries for you? it seems like a win, win situation to me. It also brings together tons of people who would likely not interact without a common goal. I hope things like this continue. I sense good things coming from this.
This is absolutely great that people are making events that get people to fix Wikipedia and make a great resource for people to use to just get an ok understanding of something. I wonder if other groups other than theater groups are going through Wikipedia and checking and updating it when it is not correct. I know when Wikipedia first came out it was somewhat of an unreliable source to use on research papers. I wonder if more people work to make it better if it may be a reliable source for peoples papers in the future. I hope that library’s come to do this type of thing for all types of subjects for the coming years.
This sounds like a great idea to clean up Wikipedia and put more information in their system about theater artist and practitioners. Wikipedia is such a large source of information that mostly everyone goes to now-a-days for information even though we are told it is sometimes false because users can so easily manipulate the information on their site. So it is encouraging when you hear that they are trying to clean up their site and make it a better tool for so many people. It is also encouraging to hear they are partnering up with a library to make sure the information is a accurate as possible and coming from actual books!
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