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projects
This page considers wiki projects.
It covers -
reference projects
There are a large number of wiki projects, ranging from
an astrological encyclopaedia in Polish through to recipes
for hacktivism against
woodchippers and the IMF.
Several of the most prominent projects are -
Wikipedia
- a multilingual project, initiated in 2001, to "create
a complete and accurate free content encyclopedia".
"The site is a WikiWiki , meaning that anyone,
including you, can edit any article right now by clicking
on the 'edit this page' link that appears in every Wikipedia
article"
Wiktionary
- a multilingual wiki dictionary
Susning.nu
- a Swedish encyclopaedia
Musipedia
- an 'open music encyclopedia'
Wikispecies
- "Directory of species"
An
attempt to list major wikis is here.
Nupedia was a precursor of Wikipedia with a more academic
orientation and formal peer review structure, initiated
by Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger (who along with Cunningham
are elder statesmen of the wiki movement). After producing
only a handful of articles it went into abeyance in 2003;
the name has since been leveraged by a different group.
wikinews
Wikinews
launched in November 2004 with a "mission" to
create
a diverse environment where citizen journalists can
independently report the news on a wide variety of current
events
Pne
enthusiast notes that it
aims
to be to news media what Wikipedia is to encyclopedias:
a free, comprehensive and, eventually, reliable source
of information, collaboratively created by volunteers
around the planet. Wikinews explicitly allows original
reporting, making it somewhat similar to Indymedia,
while adhering to a strict Neutral Point of View policy
Another
proclaims
We
seek to create a free source of news, where every human
being is invited to contribute reports about events
large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized
from elsewhere. Wikinews is founded on the idea that
we want to create something new, rather than destroy
something old. It is founded on the belief that we can,
together, build a great and unique resource which will
enrich the media landscape.
It
is unclear how Wikinews is an advance on the immediacy
of much blogging. Genuflections
to a "strict Neutral Point of View" aside, collaborative
editing by "citizen journalists" may not result in reportage
that is timely, accurate and insightful.
For the moment Wikinews remains a vision - a somewhat
blurry vision - rather than a true alternative to 'old
media' or blogerati.
wikiversity
Wikiversity
was proposed in 2005 as
a
new convergent meta-university in Asia ... to recreate
and reconnect the mental soil for quantum inventiveness
in Asia.
Proponents
claim that it
could
become much more than "yet another university"
- it has the potential for rethinking the mode of education
itself, or, at least, for furthering the model of collaborative
education that is taking hold of the progressive educative
community.
The
concept appears fashionably retro, with recurrent genuflections
to "progressive learning" in which "content
and process" are "largely dictated by the students
themselves".
We
can see collaborative work in any Wikimedia project,
particularly the Wikipedias. If this is worked well
(and it is all down to groupwork dynamics and constant
monitoring by the facilitator), the students will take
charge of the activity and it will usually have more
meaning for them than something which is learned through
the simple description of the field/subject/theory.
This touches on the experiential element to education,
requiring a reflective element on the behalf of students
and teachers, which can be done through keeping a personal
diary and sharing this selectively with the teacher
or group, or even of writing this openly, for example
in the form of a blog (or wiki-blog).
Furthermore, Wikiversity need not be confined to traditional
university programs.
Fans of Kurt Hahn, Rudolf Steiner, or AS Neill will presumably
embrace visions that
Wikiversity
does not certify student's mastery. We have no way of
assuring who is doing the work for a course. We have
no way ensuring that every course that would be required
for a degree has enough teachers to even attempt it.
We attempt to teach the same material many accredited
schools do, and to teach the material as well (or better!).
But we do not claim to be an accredited university.
It will, however be a radically different kind of learning
platform/environment/resource and its identity and scope
will be continually shaped by its students and its practitioners.
In
practice wikiversity proposals have been ignored by governments
and business. Support appears to be restricted to handful
of enthusiasts and, like some other wiki projects, it
is unlikely that there will be substantial development.
Critics have noted that providing text is not necessarily
equivalent to understanding, pointing to pre-digital projects
such as the 1950s Great Books (which was apparently
supposed to civilise mid-Western US businessmen through
a mixture of osmosis and reading groups).
Others have commented that wikiversity may indeed promote
personal growth but in a credentialist society will have
the authority of a degree received in a cereal packet
or from a diploma mill.
wikibooks
The Wikimedia Foundation's Wikibooks
initiative, hyped as potentially having "a profound
impact on the for-profit textbook and online content markets
for schools", invites users to collaboratively write/edit
online K-20 textbooks and related nonfiction. Wikimedia
director Angela Beesley commented in 2005 that Wikibooks
will work in tandem with existing textbook markets and
serve as a guidepost for industry transformation.
Wikibooks
offers the opportunity to collaborate in the process.
Learners can become teachers, as everyone is enabled
thorough the wiki model to actively participate in the
learning process. Learners will gain a lot from being
participants rather than simple consumers of knowledge.
It
is unclear whether educators and institutions have adopted
wikibooks on a large scale, despite claims that the textbooks
-
- are
"Free as in freedom, Free as in money",
- feature
"Up-to-the-minute changes" ("The very
minute a discovery or advancement is made the text can
be updated to reflect that change")
- provide
"Built-in feedback"
- offer
"Global access to educational materials"
- are
where "Academia meets the real world" ("This
is no lone professor seeking additional income, it is
a community of people ...That means textbooks that make
sense").
Judging
by additions to the Wikibooks library in October/November
2005 - a racist tract about 'White Heritage', 'Useless
Knowledge' ("Bees and dogs can smell fear")
and 'Colonizing Mars' (largely a rant about "Does
Anton Szandor LaVey Want Your Soul?") we doubt that
traditional pedagogues and publishers are quaking in their
shoes.
In 2006 German publisher Zendot announced plans to release
the German-language version of Wikipedia in a print format,
supposedly some 8,000 pages in one hundred volumes (each
to be priced at €14 euros.
other projects
Other projects include YelloWikis,
touted as "The first Open, Free and Global business
listings directory".
Our
aim is to be the biggest, friendliest, most up to date,
most predictable, least-discriminatory collection of
basic business information in the world. Compiled, edited
and checked by people like YOU!
We want to be like Yellow Pages, Dun and Bradstreet
and Hoovers all rolled into one - but open, free to
both companies and users, global, multilingual and a
lot more ecologically friendly.
... The world is full of lovely, good, helpful and nice
companies as well as bad, evil, polluting, destructive
organizations that make money from killing and hurting
people and animals. It is important that both good and
bad companies are included in the directory.
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