Wikipedia v. Google
One of the failings of the web is the lack of a way to find the right information from throughout its vast expanse. Inevitably users rely on 100 or so familiar sites for the bulk of their activity despite the millions of sites and the ba-zillions of pages with information of varying degrees of integrity.
The challenge of organizing has been with us from early web days. In the mid-90's, there was the aggregating links page, either personal or authoritative. Related was the earlier but more transient web log like What's New - grandpappy of the blogs like this. When links pages ruled the earth, there were so few pages of value that persons created pages of links organized by a topical tree: newspapers, newspapers from Poland, newspapers from Poland in English. Other than when academic or uniquely topical, These were soon overwhelmed by the volume of sites and the need for those operating to pay their rent. Ads started being added and we were soon off to the web side of the new bubble economy.
In response, search engines become the preferred route to finding what you want. The reigning champion for sifting through the morass is Google. Google is a key word index. Prior to the issues of the relative criteria used by Google and its competators to relate the keyword(s) entered to the information retrieved is the problem of dependency of all search engines of the user's knowledge. The user has to know the best key word like an index to a text book. However well each search engine searches, it can only search for the words you enter. If you do not know your particular topic well, your chances of finding what you really want are degrees of just that - chance. The never really successful meta search engine - a search engine of search engines which still left you flipping coins.
Wikipedia may be creating - by the same text book analogy - the table of contents to the internet. Aside from the communal creation of the substance of Wikipedia in contrast to Google's corporate existence, Wikipedia uses a hierarchy of topics containing - and this is the key - a text description of each topic in which are included cross references within the entire Wikipedia as well as links to useful sites outside.
This distinguishes Wikipedia from Yahoo's format (see this 1996 version) which at its core has always used a topical tree but only populates it with links to site. You do not learn through Yahoo - you hunt. It is perhaps the links page that never died but rather expanded madly. As a result, through Yahoo you are let loose in new and strange forests left to knock on each tree truck in an effort to find the one with the magic door. Wikipedia, on the other hand, does not require you to have particular knowledge to find specific information. You can, like most humans do, start your journey in the general.
Wikipedia is based on the Dewey decimal system, that butt of jokes and bane of disinterested high school students forced into libraries against their will. It is, however, useful and as it is populated by amateur contribution from its own users, logical.
So...if you know something about something go read, think, and if you can add something to the something go write it in.
Comments
Alan - June 2, 2003 9:43 am
Interesting almost related post from a year ago highlighted today on Dave Winer's DaveNet.