Wiki wierdness and “bloggers with news”

Short and snappy today – I’m supposed to be finishing off a presentation on travel. Not hanging around with you mob. From Flickr: Ok, I give up. A wiki that is not editable, how the hell does that work. yeah, i get it, you can use MediaWiki (technology tool) as a controlled knowledge management system rather than as a wiki (social media tool). But why would you? *puzzled* besides the fact that it’s free…

I facebooked this but forgot to blog it (Steve Larkin, news.com.au):

THE online encyclopedia Wikipedia is anti-government, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says.

“My sort of recollection of Wikipedia sites is they are a bit, sort of, a bit anti-government, they are sort of a bit negative about people in the government,” Mr Downer said today.

“That is my recollection of them, so maybe we should fire people up to edit them – but I know they have editorial control at Wikipedia so it probably wouldn’t help.”

If it’s, sort of, a bit important to discuss on blogs, vote it upon Bloggerati Australia.

More wierdness from The Age (Rachel Buchanan this time):

One of the most successful publishing ventures of our time is Wikipedia, the online citizen-created and edited encyclopaedia. Many Wikipedia entries are excellent but many others are inaccurate, stupid or vandalised beyond repair. In the wiki world everyone is an expert whether they are trained or not. The unifying factor is that no one is paid a cent. Wikipedia didn’t need to outsource subediting because it was never part of the interactive, social-networking web 2.0 universe in the first place. It will be interesting to see if The Citizendium, a new citizen-created encyclopaedia, will overtake Wikipedia. Anonymous entries are forbidden and work will be “gently edited”.

eh? Not part of the collaborative content medium of web 2.0? Our Rach is using a strange definition. Wikipedia for those who don’t know, is very strongly edited by the community on the ‘top’ articles (George Bush, penis, Iraq) with the inaccurate, stupid and vandalised in the ‘tail’ – as in long tail – articles that hang around with only one or two readers/editors. And while some fundamental features are not in the acknowledged format – the many-to- many discussions take place on the EDIT page, not on a forum or in ‘comments’, it’s still a social network.

Another strange one:

Stories about climate change are a “hit” with readers now, but they weren’t 10 years ago. News is not just what matters to me or you in this instant. As Tremayne writes: “Unless bloggers begin covering school board and city council meetings, major and not so major crimes, serious and not so serious accidents and fires, weather, issues of importance to the few and to the many and issues of little interest to themselves — all this on a daily basis — they will not provide the services now covered by the mainstream press.”

eh? (I know, mum said not to say “eh” but really…) . Firstly, there are some boring as boogers blogs out there on exactly those ‘newsworthy’ topics. Secondly, school board meetings have always been reported on by a single person with a newsletter – who now blogs – not the Channel Nine Evening News. Blogs are exactly about the one-to-few., though they do alright with the one-to-many too.

Feel free to vote on Bloggerati Australia if you think that article is worthy of discussions in blogs.

I read in the paper the other day about Social Media never being able to cover a big event like the Tsunami – it was from Graeme Philipson but I haven’t dug up his article again. I learnt about the Tsunami from a blog, saw the first foto of the London Underground bombings on Scoopt (Flickr style foto sharing) and heard of both Peter Brock and Steve Irwin deaths from within a virtual world. A few years ago I would only have been able to gain this information from the media. Journalists run around talking to “survivors”. Well, now the family and friends of survivors create blogs to update their social network. And the rest of us…

Anyway, just pointing out there’s a million ways of slicing and dicing Web 2.0 definitions and one woman’s “fair and balanced reporting” ain’t another’s. Back to work now.