The fourth stop in my morning Internet ritual is Wikipedia’s daily featured article.

I learned about Wikipedia, and thus about wikis, about a year ago, and the idea knocked my socks off. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, started only in 2001, which has, this morning, 737,704 articles – that is, just short of three-quarters of a million encyclopedia entries. Now the kicker: Anyone can write, edit, or comment on a Wikipedia article. It is an encyclopedia built by the community of its readers and users.

Technically a wiki is the software that creates a web page on which anyone can edit or add content. Someone correct me if the usage is too sloppy, but to me “a wiki” then becomes a web site, organized around a theme, where anyone can create or edit content. While anyone can submit an article to Wikipedia, there is a multi-tiered, quite elaborate process to assure the quality of entries.

Consider for a moment – This is an encyclopedia to which anyone with Internet access, worldwide, can contribute. Any topic – however controversial it may be – can be covered. Now consider that if you don’t find an article on a topic, you’re invited to write one. And if you find an article where you disagree, you’re invited to make your concerns known. Now you understand why “civility” is one of the three essential principles of contributions. If you’d like to understand more about the process, you can learn how to be a Wikipedia contributor.)

If you’ve read Grow With the Flow, you know that I constantly stress the critical role of our knowledge base as a component of our effective intelligence – not a result of our intelligence, but instead an important tool that helps us act more intelligently in the world. This is from the start of Chapter 2, Cognitive Abilities Theory:

This change in our understanding has enormously optimistic implications for influencing our children’s intelligence. If achievement is part of our functional intelligence, then to some extent, just knowing more can help us be more intelligent. That’s big news…

So of course that’s one aspect of my morning stop at Wikipedia: my conviction that it isn’t only kids who should be learning something new every morning.

But the way Wikipedia is assembled – that’s a draw for me too. It’s a daily reminder of the power of collaboration and cooperation. Wikipedia isn’t written by people who always agree with each other. But they’ve built ways to co-labor and to co-operate to build something extraordinary.

One final aspect of my daily stop here: I’m writing this (over my morning mocha!) sitting in a coffee shop with wireless access (could you be a coffee shop and not be wireless today?). When I tap into this morning’s Wikipedia article of the day, I become one node of a topological geography which is changing my world each morning. It seems smart to keep that in mind.

My first morning stop was The Astronomy Picture of the Day
My second stop was The Hunger Site
My third was Comparing Notes