You've probably used Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." But have you ever edited it?
I had never edited it, until yesterday.
I was looking into the Object Naming Service (ONS) standard and I realized that a new version had came out - 1.0.1 - and that only the previous version was listed as reference on the wikipedia entry. So, I logged on using my wikipedia account and I added it! It was that easy! And now, lots of people will see the new reference. It's really amazing! And also you get a very clear notion of the precautions you have to take when using information listed on wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a very valuable resource in my research, not only as a secondary reference - good to get an overview about the subject but not definite, of course - but mostly as a keyword tuning tool.
How does the keyword tuning work? Instead of using your own keywords for your publications and research, you first check how it's called on Wikipedia. There are a lot of aliases for the same thing. At the end of the day, it's better for everyone to use the same keyword
This is a nice example of the so called "wisdom of the crowds". The crowd part is right, but the wisdom... let's just say that the truth is not always democratic. But more about that on another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment