Users or creators?

Many of you may know the Atina Chile movement. Well, they have launched a campaign called “Let’s Teach Wikipedia in Chile’s Schools”.

It’s a good initiative, but I’m afraid kids will only be taught to use Wikipedia, and I don’t know whether they’ll be taught to contribute to Wikipedia, which is the most important and valuable part.

I don’t know that for a fact; I’m only passing judgment based on what I read in the piece, and above all on this other piece: http://www.atinachile.cl/node/10075

Some quotes:

• “It’s better than El Rincón del Vago” (the homework-copying site)
• “it’s easy to save”
• “the vocabulary is good”

That hints to me that what’s going on is “training users” of Wikipedia, and I don’t like that.

We can teach kids to add content about Chile, where they have to do research and complete or create new articles.

Which side do we want to be on, that of **the users **or that of the creators?

Here’s a sample: do you know what the Spanish Wikipedia’s definition of a computer is?

Compare the definition of Computadora in Spanish: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computadora

“A computer is a digital system with microelectronic technology capable of processing data based on a group of instructions called a program. The basic structure of a computer includes a microprocessor (CPU), memory and input/output (I/O) devices, along with the buses that allow communication among them. The main feature that distinguishes it from other similar devices, such as a non-programmable calculator, is that it can perform very diverse tasks by loading different programs into memory for the processor to execute.”

Compare that with the definition in the English Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer “A computer is a machine for manipulating data according to a list of instructions known as a program.

Computers are versatile. In fact, they are universal information processing machines. According to the Church-Turing thesis, a computer with a certain minimum threshold capability is in principle capable of performing the tasks of any other computer, from those of a personal digital assistant to a supercomputer, as long as time and memory capacity are not considerations.

By giving these examples I want to highlight the difference in content between the English and Spanish versions. The English version has more than 1 million articles, and the Spanish version has a hundred thousand.

My point is that both things have to be taught, because it’s really interesting for kids to fill in Wikipedia; they learn by doing it.

I picture it: history class, eighth grade, a class of 30 kids, topic: the independence of Chile, assignment: complete 30 different biographical sketches of figures from the period. A benefit for the kids, a benefit for the users of es.wikipedia.com, a benefit for society (I included that one for those who like the concept).

How do you motivate the kids?

Easy: what they write will be read by thousands of people on the internet, and will be used by generations of young people later on.

I’m not criticizing Wikipedia. On the contrary, I like it, and I even like the vastness of its content, and best of all, that the content improves thanks to the community.

A bit like what we want to do at Wikis Para Chile.