CNN Has A Story featuring Wikipedia, they describe as a free encyclopedia logging over 140,000 articles sent in by people from all over the world.
What is unique is that, not only is it free and easy to use, it also allows users to go in and edit an entry.
Wiki comes from the Hawaiian term for “quick.” And like a Web log, it’s a fast and easy way to publish online. But unlike a Web log, which typically publishes a single voice, a Wiki is the collective work of many writers.
wikipedia rocks
Just so you know.
I’ve been playing on it for years, off and on. And it’s amazing how it can leverage 5 minutes from a casually interested person into something permanent.
As long as the incoming articles don’t scroll too fast, the recent changes will also allow volunteer editors to keep up with graffiti artists/spammers/trolls and the like. There are problems with people not trying to intergrate information (see one of the Lebanese defence/terrorist forces descriptions I worked on) and buying into a single source (CIA in this case). They also occassionally have trouble intergrating non-popular stuff (see Colin Powell history).
There’s a great tidbit in this article:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
Do a search on ‘ Library ‘. Also, worth reading the rest of his stuff if you’ve got time.
— Ender, Duke_of_URL