'Web 2.0' Most Popular Wikipedia Entry 116
theodp writes "It came as no surprise to Tim O'Reilly that Nielsen BuzzMetrics found 'Web 2.0' the most cited Wikipedia article of the year (as measured by blog mentions). After all, says Tim, 'the Wikipedia article on Web 2.0 is indeed pretty darn good.' IIRC, the Web 2.0 Trademark Scandal was also good for a citation or two. BTW, the material in the article crediting O'Reilly & Co. with originating the term 'Web 2.0' was first contributed by '209.204.147.33', which is coincidentally an O'Reilly IP address."
Press Release provides incentive to manipulate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia is amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
I've come to realize that I almost always use Wikipedia as my first stop when researching something I want to learn about. I realized that I was scanning search results for a wikipedia link (now I just go straight to the wikipedia search), and chose that first.
Yes, I know Wikipedia isn't always accurate. Shocking, on a site where anyone can pretty much edit anything. But the breadth of content, and the relatively uniform structure, and the reasonable level of accuracy make Wikipedia my preferred initial stop for most casual research.
It really is an amazing phenomenon.
Because no one understand it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Are the traditional resources ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit Bingo (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone runs to Wikipedia to figure out what the hell Web 2.0 is because nobody knows. I'm not sure the people editing know. As far as I can tell it's just AJAX...so why not call it AJAX? There's no damn VERSIONS of the web!
Ah, but the article claims not that it's the most researched term, but the most *cited*! That means loads of morons are citing Web 2.0, talking about Web 2.0, and claiming to be web 2.0, as if it was an actual cohesive thing. Or that it was in any substantial way different than Web 1.0, or Web 0.95 RC2.
It's just buzzword (or bullshit) bingo. These kiddies will be the same ones talking about paradigm shifting your out of the box thinking in a proactive way, or whatever the buzzwords are in 20 years when they have jobs.
FOSS / Subscription Model (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Web 2.0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Press Release provides incentive to manipulate? (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as traffic to different encyclopedias, it's not surprising at all. I have the Encarta DVD (and older versions of Britannica and Universalis) and see no reason to consult it online - I don't think I've ever tried it once. But my main reason to use wikipedia is because it has *DIFFERENT CONTENT* - not because it's available online or for free. e.g. Encarta has articles about classic music and such, whereas on wikipedia you'll find lots of articles over other types of music and musicians that you wouldn't normally find elsewhere, like say, Chris Barnes (from death metal groups CC & SFU) -- try finding things like that on Encarta or Britannica! But then again, the DVD-based encyclopedias have videos, games, sounds, lots of photos and other multimedia content you won't find online on wikipedia, not counting specialized versions like MS Student, which my kids also love. They have different content and content types, so they *COMPLEMENT* each other. They're not directly competing IMO (even though others will surely disagree on that one).
Re:Are the traditional resources ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I'm used to a pretty good library service (I've got a Masters degree from a pretty big university), but I think that my point will stand for a whole range of libraries.
Ease: I've found libraries to be very easy to search - if you can work google, you can work the majority of library database search tools. Sure, you may not be able to do in text searching for a book (although you can for most online journal services), but you can use google to do that or, now this is a shocker, do some reading yourself. In short, finding stuff in books is easy. As for books being heavy, or on a high shelf; if you really have used a computer for so long that your body has withered away, I think books will be the last of you worries. I'd be much more concerned about walking to the library and getting mugged on route.
Vastness: No contest.
Updating: If I wanted something that wasn't in stock, it could be ordered. More often, however, a nearby library would have the book and I'd get it on inter-library loan. Basically, if a book came out, I could get a copy very quickly.
Decentralised: Much more than en.wikipeida.org.
Accuracy: You seem to be confusing "accuracy" and "neutrality". Almost nothing is published from a neutral viewpoint - you can't blame this on libraries. The problem with Wikipedia is that it claims to be neutral when it clearly is not. As with searching for things in books, the key to making judgements concerning the accuracy or neutrality of a book is to actually read it, then some more on the same subject.
Wikipedia might be great for people that have no intention or requirement to actually read things; it might be great for getting quick definitions of some TLA you've not encountered before, but it will never replace a library. For people that have to read things and produce credible pieces of work, Wikipedia is a joke: It will never replace traditional publishing. That was what I was trying to get across in my original post. If you found it funny, however, then even better!
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Web 2.0 is all about s2s (Score:2, Insightful)
Web 2.0 is not about the user interface. It's about the server to server interface.
It's not just social networking as in Orkut. But if your profile on a phpBB website listed your friends as you have them listed in Orkut, that's Web 2.0.