The model for Wikipedia

Gert Morreel, an English literature lecturer at the University of Antwerp, comments on the arguments of critics of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia and names its historical models. "Its competitors focus exclusively on accuracy and objectivity and in doing so ignore what makes Wikipedia unique: its founders did not base it on an abstract system of validity criteria, they based it on a dynamic model which generates knowledge and is constantly refined through the overlapping of different viewpoints. ... More than any other of its predecessors this vision resembles its most radical: the encyclopaedia created by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert. Unlike his co-editor Diderot did not envision an ideal, static knowledge system but a permanent process of social and intellectual interaction. ... Internet encyclopaedias and search engines can help us [to navigate] but the route one take remains a personal one. We must learn for ourselves what knowledge means for us."

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