[Air-l] Trusted Wikipedia

[Sam Liban]

Hi there!

>To do this, we need to assemble a group of people who have 
>some level of recognition in the field, and who are willing to 
>devote a small amount of time to helping to select a core set 
>of articles and oversee the review process. While we will be 
>looking at a number of ways to make this process more 
>technologically easy, the key issue here is to find a group of 
>people willing to invest a little time and their reputations 
>in an effort to make Wikipedia a more trusted source.

What I do not get is - why not set up an AIR-L wiki, consisting of the present articles in Wikipedia concerning the matters of
AIR-L and then "revisioning it"? Or is that your suggestion?
Better yet - set up a really international Wiki on the theme "communication in the 21st century" in English...

If you really mean Wikipedia itself:
Of course - it would be nice, if Wikipedia had an additional filter for expert-revewing in general or in special areas - I
really thought of the same last weekend (I actually started to draw a system) - but who would decide, who is an expert?
What levels would be needed?
Of course - there are scientists like yourself dealing with it - but then there are business people, who are more actively
shaping it (the Internet/technology/communication habits) - and people using and therefore deciding what is acceptable...how
would you rate those different approaches? 
How should they incuberate into one or more ratings? Whose votes should count to which weithing?

Especially in the field of IS, CMC and HCI I would assume, that there is no such thing as an "absolute" or "time-free" truth
(meaning that every month/year, the Internet, its technology and the way of useage and therefore the way and meaning of the
communication inside it changes/develops and therefore no fixed schemes of communication-processes/communication itself are
real/absolute)... => what would an expert's rating be worth 1/12/24 months after?

On the other hand - I really do appreciate the idea - it would be interesting to follow the process of change in how the
scientific community reviews certain aspects of the Internet or the communication processes involved => you would need a
versioning, though.

Maybe I am not understanding it correctly and/or my English is limited in terms of a scientific approach...

I really find it interesting though - as far as I can comprehend ;)

BTW: Germanys Britannica - "Brockhaus" has released one of its encyclopida (meyers lexikon) online - based on a Wiki-System
without allowing users to change articles, only allowing comments...but not linking through the different informations yet...at
least not fully...

Here at least I would appreciate the usage of the former truths ("versioning")...I viewed parts of a "Meyers Lexikon" of the
twenties recently and it was fascinating, how terms and themes have changed in the way they are portraied - terms like "race" or
"peoples" were actually fascinating when compared to our mainstream apporaches today... ( and no - this is no politcal
statement! )

>If you are interested in chatting a bit more about the 
>project, drop me a note. If you will be in Brisbane for the 
>Internet Research, perhaps we can discuss the possibilities 
>over lunch on Thursday.

How I wish, Brisbane was round the corner ;)

Please keep me/us in the loop...

sam