The current version of history flow visualizes the evolution of pages from WikiPedia: a growing online free encyclopedia being created by people all over the world who come to the site and contribute to its contents. To find out more about WikiPedia see their page describing its essential characteristics.
A question that frequently comes to mind is about what is the relationship between different online tools, eg., Blogs and Wikipedia:
a. how important is Information Visualization for the world in general, as presented in Wikipedia and
b. what is the role of Blogs in creating, synthesizing and disseminating this knowledge about information visualization?
An answer to this is, probably, visible in the traffic that moved between this blog and Wikipedia. Simply stated, this traffic was very significant.
Another answer may be in the point that Blogs continuously review and update the coverage of Wikipedia.
The following blogs have significant info on this traffic of ideas:
..Visualization, Intelligence and the Starlight project
..Visualizations from a social point of view
..Information Visualization is useful to represent unfamiliar information
..chimerically: Martin Wattenberg
..The-Fallout-over-Wikiganda
..WIKIS, BLOGS AND RSS FOR OPERATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS
Interesting extrapolation:
"Collaborative knowledge diffusion through dynamic link creation / link sharing on the Web, as connective collective intelligence [wikis and blogs are examples of intriguing web tools for knowledge diffusion and collective intelligence], Lennart Björneborn, Ph.D.
More at Google on this relationship of blogs and Wikipedia.
Do you agree that blogs contribute to this knowledge-base, and thereby directly add value to Wikipedia?
See also:
~~~~Wikipedia and Britannica - The Kid’s All Right (And So’s the Old Man) by Paula Berinstein | Consultant, Berinstein Research, March 6, 2006
Wikipedia’s slogan is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." As librarian K. G. Schneider points out in her blog, Free Range Librarian [http://freerangelibrarian.com/archives/052905/wikipedia.php], this description is aimed at Wikipedia’s content providers and maintainers, not its readers. In his first law, "Books are for use," library theoretician Ranganathan meant that "information does not exist to please and amuse its creators or curators," explains Schneider. "As a common good, information can only be assessed in context of the needs of its users."
Who exactly are the users of both Britannica and Wikipedia?
Britannica’s Panelas says, "Our customers tend to be knowledge and information seekers, a broad group consisting of students, professionals, and lifelong learners. They tend to be better educated than the population as a whole, or they aspire to be. Beyond that they share few demographic characteristics."
Wikipedia’s users are potentially everyone under the sun. Because it has versions in about 200 languages, its reach is potentially far greater than that of Britannica. Britannica offers only an English-language version, although the company does produce other works in other languages.
So not only do the characteristics of Wikipedia’s and Britannica’s contributors differ, so do their audiences. Wikipedia’s audience is far more general than that of Britannica, which implies that its mission and scope must be so as well.
~~~~Wikipedia, Free Range Librarian
K.G. Schneider: Techno-Librarian. Writer. Gadfly. Commentator-at-Large
Information professionals must read this: Blogs and wikis could blow the gaffe on you, by Tebbutt, David. Information World Review; Dec2005 Issue 219, p19-19, 1/2p, 1c. David Tebbutt, Columnist and Writer for Information World Review, UK
Information Visualization @ fliker from Lei Cui's photostream
Disclaimer: Blogsphere a blogging tool is not to be confused by the term used in the above discussion.
1 comment:
Thank you for mentioning my article in Information World Review.
My columns and features are not published online and my contract prevents me uploading them myself for three months. The result is, I keep 'meaning' to do something about it.
Your post has spurred me to action. Here's a link to the column that you mentioned. The words are as originally written. The title is clever, but I didn't write it.
Here's the link:
http://www.tebbo.com/iwr21.html
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