Andrew Dalby's "The World and Wikipedia: How We Are Editing Reality" is, by far, my favorite book so far. At first I was worried about how I would be able to get through this relatively big book, but as I was reading through it, I realized how easy and enjoyable it would be. The history of Wikipedia certainly could have been less intriguing and captivating. Perhaps Dalby's experience writing articles in Wikipedia helped, but the fact is, he is a great writer who has the ability to thoroughly tell his story while keeping the reader's sole attention.
The book goes through the transition from Nupedia (a 'scholarly' encyclopedia) to Wikipedia, the rise of Wikipedia with the help of various sites (especially Google!), the pros anc cons of Wikipedia, as well as all the problems, confusion, drama, and miscommunication along the way.
From where the web is at today, I would not have guessed that Wikipedia has only been around for less than a decade. It is a massive accumulation of knowledge that varies from the very scholarly that people can have trouble understanding to the very childish/immature that exist solely for entertainment. There are thousands and thousands of people who visit the site, referencing it, writing it, editing it, critiquing it, and enjoying it.
I was surprised at the amount of dedication editors had to various topics; people would come back to the very site they started/edited to make sure nothing was off. That very thought of policing an online article at all times is a little odd to me. For one, how do they make the time for it? How can they even tell that something is off? Where do they manage to find all the sources?
The most intriguing part of the first half was the obvious hypocrisy of the "scholarly" media, such as journals and news. The anti-Wikipedia movement basically stemmed from reporters and journalists stating that Wikipedia is unreliable, amateur, and a horrible source for any work. Yet, these very people were the ones who replicated the information that was present in Wikipedia, sometimes without even verifing the validity of the information, as they should have. For example, the false quote added in under Maurice Jarre, a famous French composer, was used in major newspapers (including Sydney Morning Herald), even after it was flagged for not having a citation in mere two minutes (pg. 92).
What a lot of people are worried about now is the possibility (that is actually happening these days) that students as well as any other groups of people will rely too much on Wikipedia alone rather than going on to further validate some of the information presented in a Wikipedia article. Yet, as it was mentioned several times in the book, Wikipedia articles have been carefully molded by dedicated editors, a lot of whom are professionals in the subject(s) they are writing about. Mistakes are often caught in minutes, and most points are backed by sources that can verify the information. More and more professors and scholars are contributing to this once-thought amateur encyclopedia that has been gaining notoriety and respect over other encyclopedias, such as Britannia. If people do not have the ability to properly use Wikipedia, it is their own fault, not of Wikipedia's.
Personally, I love Wikipedia. It has helped me in so many assignment throughout my high school career that it was my #1 most frequented site. I never had problems of using inaccurate information because I did extra research, usually browsing through the cited sources. For those of you who have not used Wikipedia or is just not a fan of it, re-read the last sentence of page 113. :)
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