BusinessWeek’s Rob Hof is reporting that Google is launching a new “app” tonight called Google Sites. As I write this, it is not yet live, however, according to Rob, it uses the “Jotspot” wiki platform Google acquired in late 2006. Previously, it has been reported that Google Sites will replace another Google App called Google Page Creator which is currently be used by a grand total of 23 people — all employees of Google. (But don’t quote me on that.)
There are already several great free, easy-to-use, wiki-apps available, but I still find that most people I know in the real world (i.e., people who don’t read this blog), have no idea what a “wiki” is beyond the website Wikipedia. (Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that uses a wiki platform and approaches. But thinking that all wikis are encyclopedias is a bit like thinking all books are encyclopedias.)
Maybe repositioning Jotspot as “Google Sites” will help people get over their aversion, fear or misunderstanding of what wikis can be.
I’ve been “hosting” the wiki SmallBusiness.com for almost two years and my appreciation of the read/write approach, the communities they foster and the versatility of the platform grows continuously.
About six months ago, I finally realized (in a duh moment) how much working on a wiki reminded me of using Hypercard, the Mac program from 1980s that was my first hands-on involvement with “hypermedia.” The little program — and it was little — used the metaphor of a stack of blank cards on which you could write anything and connect words (link) them to text on other cards: hypertext. It was a very simple concept to understand and, more importantly, the only programming necessary was the ability to type and link. I credit using it as a way to organize notes on my Mac with why I found it so easy to grasp immediately what the web was about.
It didn’t surprise me later when I ran across some interviews in which the creator of the wiki concept, Ward Cunningham, said he conceived of it first as a web equivalent of Hypercard.
It will be interesting to see if Google can help a more general audience grasp what they can do when they break away from thinking a wiki is “Wikipedia” and realize it’s just an endless stack of blank pages that you can use to organize a bake sale — or create your own company’s encyclopedia. Or anything in-between.
Later: Allen Stern (CenterNeworks) says he “hopes people never get caught up on lingo - as long as it does what they need it to, who cares what it’s called.” While I agree that it’s more important for people to use it than know what it’s called, I think a tech platform can go mainstream quicker if those who provide alternative services that do the same thing can at least all agree what to call the platform category. I can remember when companies were launching blogging platforms right- and left, but calling them things like “spaces” and “web journals.” We have a category name for e-mail. We have a category name for spread-sheets. (I could go on, but you get my drift.) Why shouldn’t the same be true for the category of wiki creation applications.
Thursday morning: Google luanched sites overnight with this explanatory video. Allen will be happy. The word “wiki” is never mentioned:
I guess it’s inevitable: whenever Google announces anything — and I mean anything — the response from the blogosphere — and seeping out into the real-world coverage — is that it’s designed to “kill” something. And so it has been during the past 24 hours since Google announced it’s working on a service where people can share “units of knowledge” called “knols.” (I’m going to call the service “Knol” from here on out in this post, but I’m not sure if that’s like calling a blog-post a blog — and if you’re a blogger, you know how irksome that can be. So, the service may be called something and a post on it may be called “a knol” but for this post, at least, I’m calling the whole thing Knol.) Since Knol sorta sounds like what Wikipedia does — allow people to share knowledge — yesterday’s announcement has been greeted with a chorus of bloggers singing, “Ding-Dong, Wikipedia is Dead.” (Later: And now by the ‘msm’ - WSJ and NYT.) Even my friend Steve Rubel, who’s almost always right about things like this (translation: I almost always agree with him) has jumped on the “Wikipedia is dead” meme-wagon and gives several reasons why.
But let’s all get real: Wikipedia won’t be killed by Google. At least not by Knol. Here are several reasons why:
1. Google’s resources and dominance may be massive, but Google hasn’t reached death star status: Can someone remind me what, other than all the early search engines, Google has actually killed online that had anywhere near the brand and market position of something as dominant globally as Wikipedia. I mean, other than Altavista that had a fairly dominant online brand, what has Google head-to-head “killed” as in introduced a clone service that then killed dead — as in put out of business — the service that it was supposed to kill? Did Google kill YouTube with its video-hosting product (Google even had a headstart)? (Google did buy YouTube, but if that’s killing, then please, shoot me.) Has Picasa killed Flickr yet? Has Google Docs killed Microsoft yet? Did Google’s Blogger.com kill WordPress or MovableType? (Again, Blogger had a headstart on WordPress.) Did Google crush Yahoo! Answers with its competitive offering? And Dodgeball — they’re really kicking folks’ ass, aren’t they? I can go on, but you get the idea. Something growing as exponentially as the web does not always support the zero-sum games necessary to allow even those with massive resources to kill others who have big headstarts, marketshare dominance — and who have excessively loyal cult followings.
2. Google may have more resources than anyone else, but it doesn’t have enough resources to fight endless multi-front wars: Sorry to use a war metaphor, but there’s no power on earth that can fight with effectiveness if it spreads its front lines too thinly. It’s not only about resources, it’s about the required focus of a few folks who must actually steer the aircraft carrier (gee, I’m even mixing war metaphors). Sure, it may appear as if Google has endless resources, but in the past few months, they’ve launched products and initiatives that have been described by bloggers as killers of the iPhone, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., etc. So they’re not just out to kill Wikipedia, they’re also engaged in skirmishes with Apple (who has $15 billion in cash) and Microsoft (I’m just going to stop here, you get the picture.)
3. Google may have an army of PhDs, but Wikipedia has a militia of Ph.D candidates: I get to make this observation because I’ve actually attended the Wikipedia cult-fest event called Wikimania where all the magic elves who make Wikipedia work congregate each year. By and large, they are crazy-smart graduate students and they don’t need no stinking Google employee perks to get fired up about defending their turf. So sure, Google may have more money than Wikipedia, but Wikipedia’s global army do one thing and one thing well. And if Google invades their turf, they will fight on the beaches. They will fight on the landing grounds. They will fight in the fields, and in the streets and in the hills. And they will never surrender — oh, wait, I got carried away there. I’ll stop with the war metaphors.
4. Knol is not an encyclopedia — or a wiki — or even kinda like a wiki, so how’s it going to kill something it’s not like? Perhaps it’s because I spend a big chunk of time head-down in a project that runs on Mediawiki (the same platform as Wikipedia), I’ve come to realize an important ingredient in the secret sauce in Wikipedia is elaborate and ever-changing taxonomy of internal links and constantly (and creatively) categorization that connect information found everywhere on the site. From its description on the Google announcement, Knol’s concept seems more like Blogger.com than Wikipedia. I know that might sound shocking to some, but here’s what I mean: It’s a personal webpage creation/publishing platform (a content management system) for one individual to post their knowledge on a topic (something I think is wonderful, by the way). Some people do that all day on a blog, but instead of creating blog pages (posts), if I use Knol to share such knowledge, I can use a content management system that utilizes metaphors and page displays that present articles on different topics about which I’m an expert. Again, that’s not what Wikipedia — or any wiki modeled on it — does. On a wiki, collaboration is exhibited in group-editing and aggressive and collaborative linking and categorization. With Knol, “collaboration” comes from comments and links and reputation management tools. So, unless there is something I’m completely missing after reading the Google explanation of it, one day, when you look up “Insomnia,” you’ll find dozens of experts giving their own slant on the issue. The A-List Insomnia experts will get top ranked. Or, perhaps the people who write the most Knols will become like the Amazon.com reviewers who become “the top” reviewers because they write thousands of reviews.
5. Wikipedia’s business model crushes even Google’s: I’m talking on the operating side, not the revenue side. With spending zero (marketing*) dollars, Wikipedia has one of the most recognized and favored brands in the world. Sure, Google is #1, but how many T-Shirts have they blown through in getting there? (In reality, while Wikipedia’s branding ROI is probably the most staggering in history, Google’s is in the same league — unlike Apple and Coke and others who spend hundreds of millions each year to gain the same level of global awareness.)
6. Knol may finally wake up the hippie fretards who keep Wikipedia from rolling in cash like the Mozilla Foundation: Oops, sorry. I was channeling Fake Steve. I have a hunch that if the true-believes who are the behind-the-scene magic elves who power Wikipedia become convinced that Google is out to crush them, they will suddenly find revenue religion and allow an alliance with Google, Microsoft or Yahoo! that will (think Mozilla’s Firefox and Google) make it rain millions into the Wikipedia Foundation’s coffers.
Summary:
Let’s face it: Google is always going to be labeled -killer no matter what they do. And despite what I’ve observed in this post, I’m not here to bury Google, but to praise it: I hope Knol is a huge success and millions of people share their knowledge using it. I’m all for spreading knowledge anyway we can. My only point here is to argue that Wikipedia is not going to be killed — by Knol, at least.
Hey, but if it does, please feel free to drop by my Orkut page and tell me about it.
Sidenote: How long will it take Knoll’s lawyers to jump onto this?
*I added this clarification word after the original post. See comments below.
Yesterday, Dave Winer outlined some suggestions (hopes) for the next step in the evolution of the web, somewhat related to the long-envisioned “semantic web or Web 3.0” — and what Dave calls for discussion sake, Web 3.0. Building on the read-write-share, grassroots, “amateur,” nature of what has been lumped together and called Web 2.0, Dave “hopes” for a day when “professional media” fully embraces, “the new media, no longer see it as a threat to their continued employment. See amateur public writing, the former audience who is no longer silent, as sources who can get attention for their ideas without going through an intermediary.”
MediaPost.com today has an article about magazines launching topical wikis. Like the steady adoption of blogging by traditional media, this is another example of the blending of “corporate media” and “personal media” into something we’ll one day call, well, whatever it is we will call the web when we stop putting numbers on it.
Ironically, I do not recommend that marketers or magazine people read the MediaPost.com article. Indeed, I have long said that if you want to understand wikis, the last thing you should do is read about them. For example, I spend a big chunk of each week tending a large-scale wiki and I have absolutely no idea what the following sentence from the article means: “The social invitation to create knowledge offers a form of audience interaction that may even be more engaging than social networks, where people create profiles but don’t necessarily interact.”
I’ll be blogging a great deal more on this topic in coming months.
Disclosure: A wiki I host, SmallBusiness.com runs on a beta-version of Web 3.0. (Note for the non-geek: while I do host that wiki, the suggestion that Web 3.0 is a release version of software is a joke.)
Michael Scott: “Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.” [This is a few weeks old, but I just saw it, via Ross Mayfield, and wanted to note it as I am making this the official art to accompany future posts related to Wikipedia.]
How can I persuade my teachers to allow me to use Wikipedia as a legitimate research source? —Kaitlyn Grigsby, Medina, Ohio
Wales: I would agree with your teachers that that isn’t the right way to use Wikipedia. The site is a wonderful starting point for research. But it’s only a starting point because there’s always a chance that there’s something wrong, and you should check your sources if you are writing a paper.
If you are at SXSW and are a wiki developer or are in anyway interested in wikis, there will be an informal “birds-of-a-feather” lunch (an “un-panel”?) today (Monday) at 12:30 in the 4th floor coffee lounge area in the convention center. Liz Henry (SocialText), Evan Prodromou (WikiTravel) and I (SmallBusiness.com) will definitely be there. Anyone is welcome to join our impromptu discussion.
Here’s a follow-up to last week’s Wikipedia controversy of the week, the revelation that a New Yorker writer of a story about Wikipedia had depended on information from an admin who claimed to be “a tenured professor of religion at a private university†but who turned out really to be a Labrador retriever. Anyway, last week, Wikipedian-in-chief, Jimbo Wales seemed to dismiss the issue. Now, he’s using the discussion section of his User-page on Wikipedia to request that Ryan Jordan (who Wales still refers to by his user name, EssJay) to resign from any “positions of trust” within “the community.”
Quote:
“I understood this to be primarily the matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and not a matter of violation of people’s trust. I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on. Even now, I have not been able to check diffs, etc. I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the community….In terms of the full parameters of what happens next, I advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach. From the moment this whole thing became known, EssJay has been contrite and apologetic. People who characterize him as being “proud” of it or “bragging” are badly mistaken.
(For those who just can’t get enough of this kumbaya singing — and some angry responses — here’s the RSS feed of changes on Wales’ talk page so you can follow along at home.)
Bonus link:Quote from Nick Carr: “In the byzantine world of Wikipedia, with its arcane language, titles, and rules and its multitude of clans, Essjay wore the robes of a wizard. He was allowed to stand beside - and to serve - Jimbo the White. Together, they would bring “knowledge” to the unenlightened masses. But then the Wizard Essjay tried to slip through the gates of the real. Now the game is up.”
“Search and Internet behavior data provide alarming insight into this powerful but volatile resource — alarming because one of the core groups of Wikipedia users are school children…. As students begin their online research, they could view the prevalence of Wikipedia references in Google as proof of the accuracy and reliability of the source. Given the search exposure and sheer volume of data available on the site, they might fall into the trap of relying on a single source for their education.
While I’m all for encouraging skepticism when using Wikipedia, I think it is ridiculous to suggest it is “alarming” that school children use it. Does Tancer believe school children would be better informed if Wikipedia did not exist and was not prevalent in Google results? With all its faults — and I consistently link to articles and blog posts that point those out — I think school children are better off because Wikipedia exists, for the exact reason Tancer says we should be alarmed. On most Wikipedia entries school children would use, even if some of the facts in the article may be disputed or inaccurate, the student will likely find a list of links to multiple sources of legitimate, authoritative web-based content. Those “External links” — and how actively those who have dedicated themselves to creating and crafting the entry protect the quality of those links is one of the hidden treasures of Wikipedia. The individuals who may fight with one another on the facts of an entry can find compromise in what is included among the “External links.” I would suggest that those links are better than Google algorithms when it comes to helping school children find appropriate material for a class assignment.
Here’s an example. If you do a Google search of “Martin Luther King”, the first page of Google results includes a link to a racist-group’s anti-King propaganda site that is obviously designed to trick students into believing it is a legitimate source of information about King. Yet it is filled with racist and anti-semetic material. (I won’t link to the site.)
While I’m sure the Wikipedia entry about Martin Luther King may not be perfect, I think school children are better served because it exists and outranks the racist group’s site. There are dozens of resources the Wikipedia article cites and links to, yet none of them are hate-group sites designed to trick children. If parents are going to let their kids use the Internet to do research, then I think I’d be more alarmed if Wikipedia didn’t exist.
“IMPORTANT NOTE: Most educators and professionals do not consider it appropriate to use tertiary sources such as encyclopedias as a sole source for any information — citing an encyclopedia as an important reference in footnotes or bibliographies may result in censure or a failing grade. Wikipedia articles should be used for background information, as a reference for correct terminology and search terms, and as a starting point for further research. As with any community-built reference, there is a possibility for error in Wikipedia’s content — please check your facts against multiple sources and read our disclaimers for more information.”
As I say almost daily these days: Wikipedia is a gateway to facts, not a source of facts. That is not a warning, however: it’s an endorsement. Parents, teachers, reporters and pundits should print out that Wikipedia “important note” and go over it with their kids. Tell them what “tertiary” means — you can find it on Wiktionary. Then, perhaps, we could all move onto real things to be alarmed about.
Another “looping” story on the evils of Wikipedia appears in today’s New York Times, this one about the Middlebury University history department banning the use of Wikipedia in citations by students in papers or tests. With great insight, the faculty realized it would be impossible to ban students from using Wikipedia altogether.
Remember the rexblog motto: Wikipedia is a gateway to facts, not a source of facts.
Also, if you’re in college, don’t cite encyclopedias.
Side observation #1: When I attended last summer’s Wikimania, a gathering of global Wikipedians, it was quite evident that university graduate students are some of the key-drivers in the administration and editorial care of Wikipedia. As Jason Calacanis (who also attended Wikimania) observed in his blog yesterday, the platform on which Wikipedia runs is (by design?) a barrier to participation by those who are non-technical. As one has to use special wiki-markup code (rather than HTML code or a wysiwyg editor) in adding or editing an entry on Wikipedia, it can be intimidating the first few times you click the edit tab. Educated, savvy graduate students are less likely to be intimidated by the geeky stuff Jason displays — therefore, it may be with some irony that university students are creating Wikipedia while at the same time being banned from citing it.
Side observation #2: During Wikimania, I observed that that hardcore Wikipedia volunteers do not defend the accuracy of Wikipedia, but they view its weaknesses as bugs that can be fixed. One weakness that I’ve noticed is being addressed is the increase in “citations” within entries. (However, there is a side controversy on this as a citation source must be available online, making it impossible to use authoritative sources that may not be available at the other end of a hyperlink.) Jason’s complaint (which I note from my earlier post, he mentioned back in August, as well) is being addressed with work on a wysiwyg plug-in that I’ve seen on some Mediawiki (the software Wikipedia uses) sites (sorry, I can’t recall a specific example, but will add a link later when I can).
“Printing and distribution technology doesn’t make a magazine…What do I mean by that? Magazines are a genre, much like novels are, with conventions and expectations attached to them. You know what I mean by a novel versus a work of non-fiction. You know what I mean by a magazine versus a newspaper. A sitcom has conventions, so do comic books. These conventions, these expectations, transcend the physical manifestation of the genre. I’ve read novels using a hand-held e-reader, and guess what?–they were still novels.”
I’ll concede David his point that the word “magazine” is a metaphor (he has some background on the etymology of the term) even when it refers to the ink on paper kind. And yes, when the conventions of magazines are applied to other surfaces or environments than print, then, yes, the metaphor of a print magazine can be understood on those new surfaces or in those new environments.
However, it is my belief that people add the term “magazine” to websites and TV shows for reasons other than the types of conventions to which David refers. Perhaps some people believe the word “magazine” adds a little gravitas to what is, uh, a website. For example, Wikia launched what it called in the press release, some new “communities” that “include democratic sorting of content, blogging, commenting and more.” However, later in the day, the new communities were being called “open-source magazines” by Wired.com’s Monkey Bites blog who picked up on this quote in the press release, “We want to provide as many ways as possible for people to contribute; they can visit Wikia to write about the facts and build-out the ‘books’ in the library. Now, they can join these new community websites to create the ‘magazine rack’, which is all about news, opinion and gossip.” In that context, the “magazine” metaphor was being used to compare a news-oriented wiki to another type of wiki that a “book” metaphor is being applied to. (I hope you can follow this along at home.)
Believe me, I know why the Wikia folks used the magazine metaphor to describe to a non-techy audience what is an open-source news wiki — real people aren’t ready for that. It’s the same reason I redirect the URL SmallBusinessWiki.com to SmallBusiness.com — the “market” is not quite there. If Wikia wants to use a magazine metaphor to help people understand what a news-oriented wiki is, that’s fine with me. However, I also believe that when terms start meaning everything, they end up meaning nothing.
That’s why, when I use the term magazine, I am referring precisely to the ink on paper kind.
And for the record, I believe the print kind will live on for as long as I’m around — and my children are around. That said, I can’t wait for the e-paper that David blogs about from time-to-time. I’ll love e-paper magazines. I can’t wait to fold up a hundred magazines and put them in my shirt pocket. Indeed, I’m on record as wanting a bigger format iPod (#3) that will be, in essence, a type of e-reader on steroids. I will buy one the day it becomes available. And I’m sure I will call the magazines I read on it, magazines. However, for now, I mean paper when I use the word magazine.
One of Andrew’s case discussion points is today’s quote of the day: “(Has) Wikipedia really…become a ‘post-revolutionary Bolshevik Soviet,’ with an inscrutable central power structure wielding control over a legion of workers?”
This is a tough one. The way the headlines are written, “Microsoft offers cash for Wikipedia edit“ and “Microsoft tried to doctor Wikipedia“, it sounds like a no-brainer to condemn Microsoft as “evil.” But upon reading more about the issue — and having to consider this issue myself in other contexts — I must ask, if markets are conversations (see Cluetrain), then we have to find the appropriate etiquette where the people who make up a company can have voices in conversations when they are being defined by, in some cases, their competitors. However, a dogma has developed on Wikipedia that suggests it is inappropriate for anyone to write about themselves or anything they are personally involved with, or may have some unique insight into. Indeed, the presumption seems to be that if an original source adds something to a Wikipedia entry, it must be false or spun or have some hidden agenda. Therefore, the resulting practice has become, it’s okay to get ones best friend to correct a Wikipedia entry, but don’t do it yourself. That way you’ll be able to say, “I have never edited my Wikipedia entry.” (Better yet, if you can say, “I never read my Wikipedia entry,” you’re even cooler on the geek scale.)
The irony of this convoluted etiquette can best be seen in this quote from one of the articles:
Wales said the proper course would have been for Microsoft to write or commission a “white paper” on the subject with its interpretation of the facts, post it to an outside Web site and then link to it in the Wikipedia articles’ discussion forums.
In the way that a high-profile individual (like Wales) who sees inaccuracies about their entry on Wikipedia is lambasted for correcting the entry, there has emerged some form of group-decision that has become translated to mean that those who work for a company shouldn’t be writing about it or the things it does directly on Wikipedia — but should construct some Rube Goldbergish trail of white papers and postings on external websites. This Wikipedia cultural nuance, while very likely evolving from well-reasoned intentions, has naturally led to the unintended consequence of a company like Microsoft looking for a “right” way to engage in the conversation, but stumbling miserably when that attempt is outed by those who believe it is better to have wrong content, than “corporate” content.
I love Wikipedia. However, the “white paper” suggestion is really crazy.
When interpreted as “Microsoft offers cash for Wikipedia edit,” sure, it sounds evil. But if Wikipedia has become the platform of record for web-based knowledge, then having a voice there is going to be a requirement for corporate America. Wikipedia either needs to find an accepted “white hat” way for this to be done directly and transparently (and not some “in the discussions, off the website way), or dark-hat, Rube Goldberg solutions will naturally follow.
Prediction: In the future (like a week from now), in addition to “SEO” (search engine optimization) and “SMO” (social media optimization) expect to see the term “WO” (wikipedia optimization) added to the “lexicon of expertise” of certain online marketing consulting firms.
Prediction: I will have much more to say about this in the future.
“To me, in areas outside my expertise, it seems that Wikipedia is an excellent source of information. But that’s the problem. In areas that I know better, I can see its flaws. I play by the rules and don’t fix the mistakes. That leaves it to the trolls to write the story. Somehow we have to resolve this. And Wales should recuse himself from being the judge in these matters.
“It now appears that if you are a corporation that feels Wikipedia is inaccurate or slanted on a topic that is of substantive importance to your business, you’re pretty much screwed.”
Behind this, I’m sure there is a long story that people who know — and, perhaps, actually care — may report. However, I just received this email regarding a test wiki I had set up at wiki.com (the domain currently redirects to the clever URL wik.is):
Dear Wiki.com User:
The migration of wiki.com sites has been completed. You can access your site by typing in your address and replacing wiki.com with wik.is. For example: mysite.wiki.com is now mysite.wik.is
If you have any technical issues, questions, or comments please feel free to contact: wik.is@mindtouch.com
Thank you for your patience during this migration. We look forward to serving you. Please tell your friends about the new site and ask them to register at http://wik.is for new sign-ups, which will happen shortly.
Sincerely,
Team MindTouch
Background: Wiki.com is shutting down by January 25th, 2007. In an agreement reached between MindTouch and John Gotts, owner of Wiki.com, all Wiki.com sites will be transferred to wik.is and will be controlled and monitored by MindTouch. We agreed to take over on such short notice because our technology powered the site from the beginning, our user interface is very intuitive and easy, and we are intimately familiar with the backend operations of the site. The sites will retain all of their original content that was intact when they were Wiki.com sites.”
For several weeks, the domain wiki.com redirected to wikia.com, leading some to speculate the wiki.com domain may end up with the “for-profit” company started by Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales. The sub-domains, however, continued to direct to the sites set up by those who received today’s email. (Or at least, the one I set up did.)
I guess it’s inevitable: whenever Google announces anything — and I mean anything — the response from the blogosphere — and seeping out into the real-world coverage — is that it’s designed to “kill” something. And so it has been during the past 24 hours since 
While I’m all for encouraging skepticism when using Wikipedia, I think it is ridiculous to suggest it is “alarming” that school children use it. Does Tancer believe school children would be better informed if Wikipedia did not exist and was not prevalent in Google results? With all its faults — and I consistently link to articles and blog posts that point those out — I think school children are better off because Wikipedia exists, for the exact reason Tancer says we should be alarmed. On most Wikipedia entries school children would use, even if some of the facts in the article may be disputed or inaccurate, the student will likely find a list of links to multiple sources of legitimate, authoritative web-based content. Those “External links” — and how actively those who have dedicated themselves to creating and crafting the entry protect the quality of those links is one of the hidden treasures of Wikipedia. The individuals who may fight with one another on the facts of an entry can find compromise in what is included among the “External links.” I would suggest that those links are better than Google algorithms when it comes to helping school children find appropriate material for a class assignment.
Another “
My magazine friend, David Shaw 
