Semantic web and Wikipedia
Thursday, April 7th, 2005I’m probably mentioning Wikipedia too often, but my previous post about the semantic web offers an interesting comparison. The Forbes article and the Wikipedia entry are both approximately 1200 words, and the former is perhaps a better non-technical introduction, but I’m vastly more satisfied with the latter.
Why? The Wikipedia entry:
- has had an awful lot of editing, by many people
- has an ongoing discussion to improve the entry; anyone who can read the entry can participate
- being hypertext, directly links all of its numerous internal and external references
- also links its ‘Knowledge representation’ category, which has another
37now 44 topically-related entries
The one is a feature article, the other an encyclopedia entry, they’re not the same thing, but it seems to me a good illustration of the different authoring processes and results.