Wikipedia

The concept behind Wikipedia is that ANYONE can contribute to the content of the site.

What does the term open source means? What does it have to do with Wikipedia?

Relates to Wikipedia on two levels: 1.) the technical level and 2.) how it came about.

Open source is within the realm of computer science. It's a type of computer software. It can be modified to suit you own needs. Open source, then, is free but not always free as in beer. One of the main people behind the concept of open source doesn't like the name open source. He prefers the name free software over open source. He ran into trouble there because the term free use to mean nothing in our culture. For instance, Professor Holmevik said, if you go and look at an operating system like Linus you have to buy that or you can dl it for free but if you want the full software you have to pay to dl it. The concept of open source was introduced to get away from the concept of free meaning nothing. In this case, Wikipedia is free in both sense fo the word. You don't pay anything to use it and you also have the capability to dl the software, use it, and modify it.

Wiki technology came along as a host of open source technology. People were fed up with not being able to modify their software. They want to be able to make modifications to their software rather than waiting for people to make the modifications they want.

Look at Encyclopedias...

Encyclopedias contain our collective knowledge. It doesn't always go very deep but it does go very broad. Encyclopedias, however, are not very accessible. We tend to move around a lot and work in a lot of different spaces so these volumes don't really serve us well. Additionally, encyclopedias aren't cheap purchases. On britannica.com encyclopedias cost an average of 1400 dollars.

People from the open source movement said, "wouldn't it be nice if we could have this information online so that you can get ahold of the information regardless of where you are." The material is more readily available.

Encyclopedia Britannica is so successful because it has been around a while, they have fact checkers, and writers. They have put a lot of effort making sure whatever content is in the books is correct. There's a contract validating the credibility of the encyclopedia's content.

Benefits of open source

Have thousands of people from all over the world whom can work on the program with you. Take Linux for instace, you can create a team of volunteers who donate their time by writing a piece of the code here and there. Why not do the same with encyclopedia's online? Can become a resource where you can have an unlimited number of writers who will work for free. In short amount of time we can expand this to cover even more information than found in the encyclopedia Britannicas.

What's the main disadvantage of Wikipedia? We don't know who the writers are, they aren't accountable to anyone but themselves, and in theory they can get on there and write anything they want. That's why critical thinking is important. You should read with a critical eye. Don't take what you read as the absolute truth.

The model that has been in operation for centuries in the print media is below

Writer ---> Editor ---> Reader

When the world wide web came along this model changed. There is no longer an editor--you are the editor. So the model looks like this

Writer ---> Reader (Editor)

There is a circle in the above model, where you're both the writer and reader and this changes the whole time. This is a much more complex model than the print model utilized before.