1. What do you think are the author’s main points in this article?
In this article, the author’s main points are how Wikipedia was started, how it functions, and why it is relevant and unique. Schiff starts by describing how encyclopedias in general got their start, dating back to as early as 220 A.D. As for Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, his first official step into the world of encyclopedias was in 2000 when he created Nupedia, an “online general-interest encyclopedia,” with the help of graduate student Larry Sanger. After a year, when Nupedia had proven to be less than successful, Sanger suggested that they adopt the wiki, software that would allow collaborative publishing and editing. Thus, the name Wikipedia was coined, the site was launched by January of the next year, and within a year, it had twenty thousand articles. Wikipedia allows basically anyone with access to a computer and the Internet to publish and edit articles. However, it does employ the help of nearly a thousand administrators – “admins” – who help Wales deal with abuse on the site, in addition to an arbitration committee, a mediation committee, and automated robots who search Wikipedia for obvious violations of the site’s rules. Despite the disputes over Wikipedia’s accuracy, it is hard to argue that it is not relevant or unique. Wikipedia provides all that old-fashioned encyclopedias do – and more. It also makes research much more convenient and efficient due to the links throughout each article that cross-reference others. It is a revolutionary development and will certainly continue to be for quite some time.
2. An important part of credible writing is selecting good supporting evidence. Select a passage from this article that illustrates the effective use of supporting detail. Explain why you think it is particularly effective.
Five robots troll the site for obvious vandalism, searching for obscenities and evidence of mass deletions, reverting text as they go. More egregious violations require human intervention. Essjay recently caught a user who, under one screen name, was replacing sentences with nonsense and deleting whole entries and, under another, correcting the abuses—all in order to boost his edit count. He was banned permanently from the site.
In my opinion, Schiff does a great job all throughout the article of using supporting detail, but the above passage is one such example. The two paragraphs before this example speak of the vandalism and abuse on Wikipedia and how it is handled. The passage above continues that topic, explaining how automatic robots search and deal with the less subtle issues, while the more serious ones are handled by “humans” – admins such as Essjay. Schiff then provides and explains an example of such a situation, providing good supporting evidence.
In my opinion, Schiff does a great job all throughout the article of using supporting detail, but the above passage is one such example. The two paragraphs before this example speak of the vandalism and abuse on Wikipedia and how it is handled. The passage above continues that topic, explaining how automatic robots search and deal with the less subtle issues, while the more serious ones are handled by “humans” – admins such as Essjay. Schiff then provides and explains an example of such a situation, providing good supporting evidence.
3. Throughout the article, the author compares Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica, but not specifically on design. How would you compare the two encyclopedias from a design perspective?
Starting with visceral design, I feel that Encyclopedia Britannica triumphs over Wikipedia. The Encyclopedia Britannica books are beautifully bound and decorated, with hard covers, gold trim, and crisp text. In contrast, the Wikipedia main page and site are both very textual and contain few colors other than white, black, grey, and blue. While it provides the site with a neat and professional appearance, it certainly does not have the “wow” factor that usually accompanies examples of great visceral design. From a reflective design standpoint, I believe that Encyclopedia Britannica is once again victorious. There really is nothing like the feel of actually holding a book and flipping the pages. In a way, it makes the information the publication presents seem more tangible. However, behaviorally, Wikipedia is far better than Encyclopedia Britannica, and given the nature of encyclopedias, behavioral design would appear to be the most important aspect. Wikipedia makes searching and finding incredibly simple. Rather than having to pore over small text in an extremely long index, the user simple has to type their query into the search box and they are provided with a list of results in order of relevance. If the user is not sure of their search and incorrectly types something, the site will even redirect them or offer suggestions to different topics. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, every article on Wikipedia contains many links that cross-reference other articles. Also, information in complete articles is always cited, and sources are listed at the end of the article. Overall, although Encyclopedia Britannica is more successful than Wikipedia in the aspects of visceral and reflective design, Wikipedia is far more adept in reflective design. Therefore, from a design perspective, Wikipedia is more ideal.
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