This blog intends to share the conclusions of the dissertation presented at the University of Évora, in order to obtain a
PhD in Management - Information Systems, where a comparative study on the
quality of scientific information produced using wiki tools and concepts is
presented. Because I'm still waiting for the thesis defense, the information available here for the time being is just a taste of the study, which I hope to share afterwards.
The choice of research topic relates to the issues that arise from reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, in which Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams show how the advent of Web 2.0 potentiates a radical change in the way we understand collaboration. Due to the Internet, a crowd of amateur people not falling into the traditional hierarchical organizations of enterprises are producing goods, services and contents.
Among the many reactions to the Tapscott book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture by Andrew Keen stands out. Keen devalues the content generated by the masses, saying that they do not have quality and take out economic value from the traditional content creation. The discussion that has arisen around these two diametrically opposed positions is far from generating consensus.
Nature published a study entitled Internet Encyclopaedia Go Head to Head, which also caught my attention because it compared the accuracy of the contents of Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica, concluding that there was not a significant difference in the quality of their contents. Although the methodology used, in my humble opinion, is questionable - and even Britannica rejected the results - this suggests that a multitude of amateurs may have built a product similar to an encyclopedia that is commonly associated with an idea of quality and accuracy.
So as to clarify this subject, I have developed a comparative study between Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica in order to confront the quality of the knowledge repository produced by them, supported by what I hope to be a bullet-proof methodology.
The choice of research topic relates to the issues that arise from reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, in which Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams show how the advent of Web 2.0 potentiates a radical change in the way we understand collaboration. Due to the Internet, a crowd of amateur people not falling into the traditional hierarchical organizations of enterprises are producing goods, services and contents.
Among the many reactions to the Tapscott book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture by Andrew Keen stands out. Keen devalues the content generated by the masses, saying that they do not have quality and take out economic value from the traditional content creation. The discussion that has arisen around these two diametrically opposed positions is far from generating consensus.
Nature published a study entitled Internet Encyclopaedia Go Head to Head, which also caught my attention because it compared the accuracy of the contents of Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica, concluding that there was not a significant difference in the quality of their contents. Although the methodology used, in my humble opinion, is questionable - and even Britannica rejected the results - this suggests that a multitude of amateurs may have built a product similar to an encyclopedia that is commonly associated with an idea of quality and accuracy.
The ultimate goal of this study is to prove that the following sentence is false, or to replace the (citation needed) by a reference to this paper.
suggestions, comments & insults are welcome!
ResponderEliminar