Wiki Contributions on a Novel, a Person, a Subject Report (Assessment)

Without My Cloak

“Without My Cloak” is a novel that was distinguished as the first literary mark for Kate O’Brien published in 1931. Being raised in a middle-class family herself, O’Brien accurately transferred the way of life in Ireland, outlining in parallel some of its defects by ridiculing the values and the restrictions that can limit one’s freedom.

Plot Summary

The novel tells the story of the Considine family in different generations, starting with Anthony Considine, who set the beginning of the story creeping into Mellick town with a stolen house in 1789. The Considine family became a leading family in Mellick, where the thrift and hard work of Anthony and subsequently his son Honest John established the image of a typical middle-class family. This image was put to a threat, when Dennis, John’s grandson, fell in love with a peasant girl, starting a series of events that represent a loss of individuality, divided loyalties, and the alienation of family life.

Salomon, Otto

Salomon, Otto (1849 – 1907), is a Swedish teacher and educator, mostly known for his contribution to the Swedish system of handicraft-based education (Sloyd), and being the initiator of its introduction in national schools. From 1872 he was the principal of a vocational school for boys, and from 1882 “Salomon concentrated his activities on the teacher-training school, lecturing and organizing for the further training of elementary school-teachers. Salomon believed that education should begin with consecutive tasks following one after another with growing difficulty, rather than separate exercises. His book “Handbok i pedagogisk snickerislöjd”(1890) [Handbook on Educational Woodwork] was translated into several languages.

Homeokinetics

Homeokinetics is the study of complex systems from an atomistic point of view as a set of moving particles. The main idea of homeokinetics is treating all complex systems on an equal footing, animate and inanimate, providing them with a common viewpoint. The concept of homeokinetics as a branch of physics was developed by Arthur Iberall and Warren Mculloch, and started as biophysical research conducted by Iberall for the NASA exobiology program. The key concepts of homeokinetics were refined after Iberall was invited to the Crump Institute for Medical Engineering of UCLA in 1981.

• Notable Scientist using homeokinetics
• Richard Baum
• Frank L. Hassler
• Rudolfo Llinás
• William Mace
• Alexander Moore
• Harold Soodak
• Michael Turvey
• Douglas White
• David Wilkinson

Significance of Entries

Without My Cloak

Kate O’Brien’s work is worth mentioning, first of all, due to its literal contribution as a work that won many awards. The list of awards includes prizes such as James Tait Black Memorial Prize – Britain’s oldest literary awards, and The Hawthornden Prize- another prize annually awarded to an English writer for the best work of imaginative literature. Additionally, the bibliography of Kate O’Brien does not have a single entry in Wikipedia, thus as a start, work should be selected and as a personal opinion, “Without My Cloak” is a perfect candidate for such contribution.

Salomon, Otto

Otto Salomon is a notable figure in the field of education. It should be noted that Sloyd- a term extensively described on Wikipedia has only two references for Otto Salomon, which both lead to a nonexistent page. For a person and a figure that made a great contribution specifically to this term, and as an educator with more than a dozen books in that field, his name is worth mentioning. In that sense, the entry will require further modification in order to include a short biography and a general overview of his works and their influence.

Homeokinetics

Homeokinetics is a rare field of physics with only a little over 600 search results in search engines. However, this field has a solid theoretical framework and a list of followers including scientists and professors from various fields. The innovative approach presented within this field of study is at least worth mentioning especially considering the uniqueness of the ideas presented in this field.

Evaluation of wiki

The Wikipedia project is focused on the creation of an online encyclopedia written by users. Each visitor of the encyclopedia’s site can bring a feasible contribution: correction of an article, or addition or removal of any information. The main principle of Wikipedia – the uttermost democracy, therefore any inexperienced author can participate in the project along with skilled experts.

Each Internet user can become the author of a Wikipedia article. Moreover, everyone can correct another’s article. In Wikipedia there are no moderators, therefore all changes become visible at once to other visitors. It would seem that Wikipedia represents a chaotic system in which malefactors and vandals can play the main role. Such an online encyclopedia could turn very quickly into an environment for conflicts and insults. However, nothing similar has occurred, where the main phenomenon of Wikipedia is its self-organizing mechanism in which knowledge is selected, crystallized, and polished. Articles in Wikipedia are written competently enough and often even surpass in accuracy and completeness articles from traditional encyclopedias, surpassing the latter inefficiency. There are three complementary explanations of this phenomenon:

• There are simple and accurate rules for writing or editing articles.
• There is a “public” administration” within the system with its own hierarchy of administrators which are appointed based on their contribution to the system’s development.
• Vandals and malefactors are actually ten times less than the project’s participants which make a positive contribution.

Wiki pros and cons

Wiki projects are not reduced to the process of writing articles and entries; mostly they represent the social structures in many respects copying the construction of a real society. The basic disadvantages of Wikipedia are the continuation of its advantages, which is vandalism and extensive editing. “While supporting the goal of openness and verifiability, the username structure of the site provides complete anonymity for its editors and administrators, which renders the site constantly vulnerable to vandalism and fraud.” (Miller, 2007) Additionally an essential disadvantage of Wikipedia could be considered unreliability. Any data obtained from Wikipedia are necessary for rechecking. However, in practice in most cases the information is authentic, although it is unknown when the exception will occur. The growing integration with search engines such as Google, leads Wikipedia to become a sort of monopoly for truth — after all, any search inquiry returns first of all, with articles published in Wikipedia, with the articles of alternative projects appearing at the end of the list. Thus, internet users are forced to believe that only Wikipedia is the reliable source. In such situation the role of Wikipedia as a tool of propagation and advertisement is a major one. It should be noted that in regards of Wikipedia articles being shown first in search results can lead to the abandonment of intensive research, as most users use the first five to ten results, in such case it is no wonder that using Wikipedia as a reference in most educational institutions is not allowed. Wikipedia articles can be useful for primary initial acquaintance with a certain subject, but for thorough research, nevertheless it is necessary to return to the books written by experts, respectable encyclopedias and scholar articles. Many articles in Wikipedia regarding special subjects contain data obtained from popular scientific sources or out-of-date textbooks; therefore they should not be addresses with total reliance. Indeed, it should be noted that the reference list of a certain subject do contain the original source that could be checked, but it is hard to check all the resources when the controversial subject is lying within a single word.

Web 2.0 with the idea of internet with users’ contribution with an obvious example in wiki projects such as Wikipedia is a great step forward. The project is constantly developing with errors being corrected and constant improvements made. After all, in Wikipedia correction is much easier than disinformation, as wiki environment stores the history of all changes of all pages. Any user, noticed a certain act of vandalism, can click on the history link and restore to any previous version of page. All changes in articles are traced by volunteers, and it is not possible for anyone to change information for a long time.

Nevertheless, the success of Wikipedia has shown that the project of internet encyclopedia already is a serious source of information, possessing, unlike the traditional sources, a remarkable feature – efficiency.

Works Cited

1. Miller, N. (2005). Wikipedia and the Disappearing “Author”. ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, 62(1), 37+.
2. Miller, N. (2007). Wikipedia Revisited. ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, 64(2), 147+.
3. What is Homeokinetics?( 1996).
4. James Tait Black Memorial Prizes. (2008) University of Edinburgh.
5. The Physics of Complex Systems.(2008) Web.
6. DUFFY, E. (2008). HAWTHORNDEN PRIZE FOR IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE.
7. Obrien, K. (1987) Without my cloak. Brown Book Group.
8. Scholz, T. (2008). Market ideology and the myth of Web 2.0. First Monday 13(3)
9. Thorbjörnsson, H. (1994). OTTO SALOMON. Prospects:the quarterly review of comparative education, 24 (3), pp. 471-485. Web.