[Today] The Wikipedia Revolution

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/webofideas/2009/03/wikipediarevolution

From the Berkman Center: "The Wikipedia Revolution is the first narrative account of the remarkable success story of the "encyclopedia anyone can edit." Andrew Lih, a Wikipedia editor/administrator, academic and journalist, tells how the Internet's free culture community inspired its creation in 2001, and how legions of volunteers have emerged to create over 10 million articles in over 50 languages. The book recounts colorful behind-the-scenes stories of how obsessive map editors, automated software robots and warring factions have come to shape a complex online community of knowledge gatherers. Learn about the historical underpinnings of Wikipedia, of how a Hawaiian vacation and a fringe piece software from Apple Computer inspired the wiki concept, and realized the original read-and-write capabilities of the Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web. While Wikipedia has become firmly planted at the top of Google's search results, what are the challenges as sum of all human knowledge becomes more complete, and its problem is not growth, but reliability? Should we be putting so much trust in a resource created by anonymous nobodies?"