[NCB Best Of] Wikipedia is the best thing ever!

  By Tac Anderson | February 5, 2009 - 7:42 pm | Comm

This week marks my 2 year blogiversary. To commemorate one of the things I thought I’d do is re-post some of my better older posts. Oddly enough this is my #1 blog via search engines. Apparently this is still a very popular quote by Michael Scott. I attribute it’s high search ranking to the fact that I posted this just hours after the original show ran. This blog was originally posted on 4/10/07

 

“Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world, can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.” – Michael Scott


The Office (US TV series)
Image via Wikipedia

I am a huge fan of The Office. The above quote is from April 5th’s (1997) episode. in a very tongue in cheek way, the writers of The Office are highlighting an ongoing social debate. There is constantly (and will continue to be) a debate over the validity and accuracy of information on Wikipedia. To me this is a non issue, for others it is THE issue.

For me what it has done is shown what is possible. People want to share knowledge. People want to colaborate. People will use New Media tools. And most importantly when I talk to clients about wiki’s it gives me an example of a technology that everyone is familiar with.

A wiki is a great piece of technology. How you use it is up to you. If anyone is using a wiki in their workplace please leave a comment here. If you have an example of wiki’s that you use when trying to explain them, other than Wikipedia leave that comment as well. Or if you have your favorite Office quote you can leave that here too.

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About Tac Anderson

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.
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  • http://www.pinpointperformance.net/blog Justin Beller

    Happy blog anniversary Tac.

    One thing I might add regarding wikis is something I told a colleague when explaining to them the concept behind a wiki. Their concern was that being open source anybody can say anything about a given topic without any governance. It’s not policed so therefore it is not reliable.

    On the contrary I explained to them the power of groups, networks and communities. The people who are passionate about a topic(s) are the ones who are going to police the content and make sure it is accurate. They have a vested interest in it. There’s far too much content out there for just one or a small group of people to conduct shenanigans with, so while the concern is justified the risk is more often minimal.

  • http://www.pinpointperformance.net/blog Justin Beller

    Happy blog anniversary Tac.

    One thing I might add regarding wikis is something I told a colleague when explaining to them the concept behind a wiki. Their concern was that being open source anybody can say anything about a given topic without any governance. It’s not policed so therefore it is not reliable.

    On the contrary I explained to them the power of groups, networks and communities. The people who are passionate about a topic(s) are the ones who are going to police the content and make sure it is accurate. They have a vested interest in it. There’s far too much content out there for just one or a small group of people to conduct shenanigans with, so while the concern is justified the risk is more often minimal.