Oregon, history, & the Internet

Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud program on May 8 2009 featured a discussion of the Oregon Encyclopedia in comparison to Wikipedia -- specifically WikiProject Oregon.

This program raised some fascinating questions and thoughts about the production and dissemination of knowledge, and the role of different publishing methods in this production and dissemination.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts after you've listened to this show and read some of the comments. Here's some of what I think about when comparing & contrasting the Oregon Encyclopedia (OE) and WikiProject Oregon (WO):

** The OE and WO can be -- and in this case are -- complementary publications: The OE is often cited in WO, and many of the topics in WO reflect the range of interests of the general public that, much of the time, should be (and often is) covered in the OE.

** The OE prides itself in maintaining a distinct authorial voice for all of its entries while publishing entries that achieve a fundamental level of readability, relevance, and veracity; the WO relies on a community to compose, edit, and modify the entries, without much regard for a distinct authorial voice.

** OE entries undergo a review process that includes double-blind review from established experts, fact checking, copy editing, proofreading, and two reviews by the Editors-in-Chief, before being published; WO relies upon input from a community of interested parties to add, subtract, and edit individual entries.

** The OE holds community meetings throughout the state to solicit local and regional topic ideas and identify writers; the WO relies predominately on the Internet to generate interest and input.

That's what I got, off the top of my head. I'll leave it up to the commentariat to rank and grade these according to the requisite moral, ideological, and philosophical points of view.

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