The TED talk titled 'Birth of Wikipedia' was the most interesting of the three readings to me, because I knew it was open-source servers funded by public donations, but I had no idea how the infrastructure of the actual organization worked. I thought some of the figures he presented were particularly interesting. With over two million articles, Wikipedia is more popular than the New York Times, 18% of edits are made by anonymous users, meaning they have predominantly strong trusted, credible editing sources. Also, only 1/3 of hits are made to pages written in English, which definitely is a wake-up call to all of us that are English-centric minded, myself included. Their neutral point-of-view policy and their social concept of cooperation work extremely well together in order to give the world not just the 'truth,' but the facts.
What I love most about Wikipedia is their mission statement. Basically their goal is to empower people everywhere to make good decisions. I love that they are dedicated to raising opportunities for every person around the globe to learn about anything they want. It truly is a global resource for one of the most accurate and comprehensive encyclopedias that has ever existed, and I believe that is a beautiful thing. In an age where the internet is dominating education and everyone can learn anything, Wikipedia presents an amazing opportunity for organizing that information and making sure it's fit for public consumption. I cannot wait for WikiBooks to come out....maybe it will cut down on the cost of a college education? This video went along with the article that called this The Age of Collaboration to allow for open innovation. I can't wait to see how it develops in the coming years!
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