Shirky 4-6

In chapter 5 when Shirky discusses Wikis, this reminded me of a conversation we often have in DTC 356 about how Wikipedia is becoming a more reliable source and that people in the net generation are more accepting of resources like Wikipedia than those in the baby boomer or even to a certain extent gen xers.  In my opinion, the more people that use Wikipedia, the more accurate it's going to be because of the wisdom of crowds.  It's like the ask the audience feature in who wants to be a millionaire.  Usually the crowd guesses right unless it's a really difficult question and even then, the answers are usually split over two of the possible options.  However, Shirky also brings up the point that there's no incentive to change a Wikipedia article.  Dr. Arola was talking about American Idol and said that somehow actually voting for a contestant is way more embarrassing than just watching the show every week.  For Wikipedia to be as effective as it can be, it needs to become more of a social norm for people to edit it.  Wikipedia has taken steps to make it seem more reliable to skeptical users by marking articles that aren't as credible as they would like and having citations.  In the future I hope that more and more people, especially in the academic world, edit Wikipedia as well as use it so that it can be taken to its full potential.  One day in the future, Wikipedia will probably be perceived at least as credibly as something like Britannica.