Like it or not, this is the way things are moving. Many people are so skeptical of the traditional media that they feel that "social editing" is probably a more accurate way to view the news. In a way, they might be right. No matter how objective a professional journalist claims to be, I believe that everything passes through some sort of personal filter. That's not to say that the news is inaccurate; I just don't believe it's really possible to be unbiased. Fair, yes. Unbiased, no.
Social editing is just turning over the news to more people. Hopefully the more extreme bias will cancel out.
What's cool about this is that the popularity of a news story is what determines its placement. After it's no longer as fresh, it falls down the front page and eventually off of it. That really allows the users to have a vote on what's important. Warring factions can compete to keep something on the front page or get it moved off by alternately "digging" or "laming" a story.
Sometimes a key to reaching a goal is the support of others. This is a nice way to have the support of a friendly group of compatriots. They may be striving for a similar goal or just striving for a goal in general, but either way, they'll likely be supportive because that's what they want in return. This brings me to another motivator that may not be as evident here: accountability.
Sometimes when you need motivation to achieve a goal, you need someone to be accountable to, not a cheerleader. This is particularly true of goals that are more than stretching. I don't get the sense that you get a lot of that here. Perhaps it depends on the goal.javascript:%20postComment(0);
I agree with Mr. Spalding. I think that the books you own are a very powerful representation of you. I've never heard the term "mental furniture" before, but I think it fits in this case. Although I can understand the draw of this site, for myself, I wouldn't really spend that much time here. For me, much of the fun associated with reading is heading to Barnes and Noble and browsing the titles myself. I don't really like asking other people for recommendations because it sort of take some of the fun away for me.
This is so cool. Things become so much more concrete when you write them down, and you're really forced to examine yourself.
Thinking about my own job, I can see where people would get territorial about their information and not want everyone to have free reign to change it. It's human nature. However, really great things can come out of collaborative work, so sometimes you just have to let go and see what happens.
The number and variety of ways Wikipedia has built in is really forward thinking. I'm sure this developed out of necessity over time and I'm just seeing the end products of the labor, but it seems like they have most angles covered.
Speaking of angles, I liked the part about keeping the legal angles off the site, even though Wikipedia doesn't mind if you take someone to court outside of the site. Nice.
Those questions were really good, and the information about the programs that take Word documents or text with HTML tags and turn them into Wikipedia markup is probably some of the most useful I've seen on these pages.
There is enough here to convince me that in order to get a wiki going at work, I need to involve our IT team. I thought it might be as simple as choosing a hosted website, but it looks like it's a bit more complicated than that.
I logged in as cbmayabb and added an "Event" to my hometown's entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Prairie,_Missou...
In case it gets deleted before you see it:
Events
East Prairie is the host of the Tour de Corn bicycle ride each summer that attracts cyclists from many surrounding states and raises money for local charities.
![[Avatar]](/images/avatar26.png){kind=avatar}
Branch