A recent MIT Technology Review entry claims that Wikipedia will soon offer video clips. The importance of video on the web is ever increasing, and so is the attention put on companies to either offer video content or support it on their websites. Is it any wonder that Google threw down 1.6 billion dollars for YouTube? Having video content on Wikipedia seems like a natural progression. What got my attention was that Wikipedia also plans to, “offer ways for users to search the entire Web for importable videos, and plans to provide tools to edit, add to, and reorganize the clips within the Wikipedia website, just as is now done with text.” So now any regular Joe can become a Ken Burns while still in his/her underwear at home. Sounds like a really powerful tool. But, in my opinion, it points to the overall flaw of Wikipedia; the information is being provided by and maintained by regular Joes. I’d rather have the real Ken Burns.
Leave a Reply