[Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia

[Karen Coyle]

Thomale, J wrote:

>
>I think the assumption behind citation indexes is that the people doing
>the linking are themselves authoritative sources, so the citation index
>is therefore valid (which of course leads one to Mike's question, "what
>makes something authoritative?"). On the web, anybody can link to any
>source of information they wish and therefore boost its perceived
>authority.
>  
>
So there's an element in this discussion of the differences between 
popular culture and academic culture? In an academic environment, 
linking is authority; in a popular environment, linking is popularity. 
Both are good measures for their target audience. But what is the web -- 
is it academic, or is it popular? One of the big problems with the web, 
IMO, is that it is a huge, undifferentiated information space, mixing 
popular, academic, goof-ball, commercial, religious, not to mention all 
age groups. A search on Google is more a measure of the current users of 
the Internet than of the information . Type in "python" and the top 
result is the Python language home page. But maybe I'm a 12-year-old 
interested in snakes. Monty Python shows up long before any reptiles do. 
And in the first 10 pages, the only mention of a snake is "*Python* 
Bursts After Trying to Eat Gator - Yahoo! News 
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051005/ap_on_fe_st/gator_python>". The 
net, and those who index it, treat information like it's one big blob, 
and users are just a single, big carbon-based mass. Why do we have 
libraries, and not a single Library? Because "all the information in the 
world" isn't a useful set.

kc
p.s. And before you answer, yes I know that "pythons" gets the snakes, 
but I consider that an accident of our use of language, and not one that 
all users will be aware of.

-- 
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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