Week 12: Social Software

One particular habit in which members of the scientific community need to constantly engage is the use of journals or logs for their work. By keeping track of all their activities throughout the day, scientists are maintaining and updating a source that can serve as a reference for them. Through the utilization of the web-log, or blog, not only does the technological innovation enable the scientists more sufficient means for recording the events of each time period in accordance to their entries, but also to easily publish the information and to allow others to observe the details of their studies. The drawback to the data is that they have been recorded in an off-hand manner through the perspective of an individual. This in turn can render the source as not quite presentable and fall short from being considered as professional. That is why there are wikis to encourage more collaboration within the scientific community. As members are able to bring their observations to the table, each individual takes part in assembling the information and editing it in a manner to ensure coherence and accuracy. However, just because these sources are being made available, it does not necessarily mean they would be accessible. Of course, there are always search engines to help locate the source, but unless the user knows the title of an article or its publisher, the information basically remains lost within a shuffle. That is why there is the practice of folksonomy to help narrow down on the search. By providing the means to label sources based on the topics with which readers may tend to associate them, the tags serve as an alternative option for retrieving the types of information that users seek within the confines of a specific subject. Such a task could be utilized by the scientific community, but it should be intended more for the general public. It is for their sake the information needs to be made available and accessible, which means the people should be entitled to label the sources in which they see most fitting. Although these technological innovations provided for members of the scientific community more efficient means to gather, assemble, publish, and distribute their research, even those tasks should not be made exclusive to those individuals in particular. As a result of Wikipedia, the general public has not only the power to organize sources of information their way, but to also create them. The website permits people to conduct their own researches in certain fields and contribute their own articles. As a result of more sources of information from the scientific community that have become more widely available over the Internet, users have been given more opportunities to access the content, which enables them to create the kind of material that a website like Wikipedia is seeking to fulfill its purpose.

I am being reminded of the book “The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary” by Simon Winchester. Some of the earlier versions of the English dictionary were developed single-handedly, as was done by Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster. Although the English-speaking world does indeed owe a debt of gratitude for their devotion and hard work, for obvious reasons their contributions were simply not sufficient enough. When it came to the development of the Oxford English Dictionary, a completely different approach was to be utilized. The original members of the staff who were responsible for establishing the project had decided that instead of just taking up the responsibility themselves, the general public was also to be involved. People were requested to submit their list of words, as well as their definitions, while the staff consulted each other on what to accept and reject and what edits need to be done. From there, they were to be compiled, organized, and then assembled. The parallel should be pretty noticeable between how this endeavor came about and how Wikipedia made its impact. Just like the development of the Oxford English Dictionary, the creators of Wikipedia knew that the job of assembling a reliable source for information is no easy task for a group of a few individuals; hence why they believed more sufficient results could be achieved by turning to the general public for assistance. In comparison to how Encyclopedia Britannica presents itself, Wikipedia offers a lot more flexibility. Whereas the former collects its information very selectively and has the articles created and assembled by a devoted group of scholars in a very professional manner, the latter allows just about everyone to contribute whatever pieces of information they want and can assemble the sources in a similar manner. Although it appears as though Wikipedia functions in a chaotic manner, the staff is smart enough to realize that a certain degree of order always needs to be maintained. Because the staff is always looking through articles to check for accuracy and neatness, this is a clear indication that the professional model often observed by the older generation (as is for the case of Encyclopedia Britannica, of course) has never been abandoned, or at least not in its entirety. Even though the manner in which most people tend to gather and publish information via Wikipedia may not be as professional as how scholars perform their duties for such sources as Encyclopedia Britannica, as long as Wikipedia gives readers a general idea about every topic that is available (as what any other encyclopedia attempts to accomplish), then it is successfully fulfilling its purpose.