Wikipedia knows Hawaiin

Did you know?

..."Wiki-wiki" is Hawaiin word for quick.
...This online resource used to be called "Nupedia" and the preferred requirement for editors was a Ph.D. Because of this requirement, Nupedia only had a few hundred articles. (Nupedia started up and shut down in 2000.)

(Blogger's commentary: Isn't that interesting? Those considered competent by a legally and internationally recognized document proving that one researched, wrote a paper and defended it were once the only ones who contributed. Now that the playing field has opened up, everyone's contributing, no doubt from every level of competency, scholarship and education. Think about this: how many people do you know might as well have a Ph.D? They just never went to school and did work for a grade. Instead, they lived life, read books, talked to people and learned from the greatest classroom of all: the world! This is what I'm saying: the modernist values the Ph.D., the documented validation. What does the postmodernist value concerning scholarship?)

Did you know? (cont.)
...Wikipedia has a mantra: neutrality.
...Wikipedia as we know it today started when the two guys who started Nupedia published the articles they already had to a wiki site and opened it up for browsers to edit and add to.
...It's "virtually" impossible to vandalize a Wikipedia article.

I am currently reading a paper written by a professor from the University of Hong Kong, the resource from which I'm gleaning all this beautiful information:

(Since it's such a habit of mine, need I mention that on top of the University of Hong Kong article are the words "This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page"?)

Lih, Andrew (April 16-17, 2004).Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable Sources?. 5th International Symposium on Online Journalism. 1-3.

There's a PDF available somewhere. One of my professors passed this on to me. Feel free to email me (crowleyvs05@crown.edu) if you would like me to send you the PDF.