Collective Authorship

Wikipedia certainly serves as a "knowledge space," whereby individuals form their own community in the quest to share knowledge. Much like the often-cited fan communities and "soap talk," who rejoice in the sharing of their expertise in a particular field, the wiki space quickly turned into an outpouring of individuals interested in offering their tidbits to unlimited topics. Wikipedia is also in the transitional moment that Levy attributes to society at large: still novel and unresolved in relevant authorship and accuracy battles (such as those who continue to post even after their material has been removed). Furthermore, Wikipedia has expanded beyond the original shared knowledge of its individual contributors to extend to a collective intelligence whereby knowledge is combined with an end product of society's knowledge as informed by society's memory and experience. Through the developing informational space of Wikipedia, society is certainly "comparing, refining, and negotiating understanding" of just about any subject area. Personally, I think the form is important, however flawed. There's still a long way to go; and as an educator, I've refused student use of Wikipedia "facts" for academic use because of its limited restrictions on content. Though everyone is probably an expertise of something, I still value traditional, peer edited resources.