Information Literacy and Web 2.0

Library 2.0 is: 

1. open: "to allow and enable further development of its operations"
2. interactive: "so that users have opportunities to contribute and react in libraries with the help of Web 2.0"
3. convergent: "to accomodate various Web 2.0 tools to accomplish its missions"
4. collaborative: "in order to make librarians and users function as collaborators rather than as disseminators and receivers at the two ends of the library communication spectrum"
5. participatory

"Over the long term, the quality of a gvien Wkipedia article will do a random walk around the highest level of quality permitted by the most persistent and aggresive people who follow an article" (p. 64).

"I think that many Wikipedians themselves do not quite realize that edit wars are not merely a nuisance; they are in fact Wkipedia's main method of settling difficult content questions.  But since all contributors (even if they are anonymous) are held to be equal in epistemic authority, there is simply no means of settling an entrenched dispute.  Wikipedia idealistically promotes both "consensus" and neutrality, but these are weak decisionmaking tools at best.  The fact is that if two editors cannot reach an agreement, the dispute will continue indefinitely despite policy contraints--or until one of them gives up, so that the other side wins "by default."  Wikipedia might be best described as having a rule of the most persistent-or, perhaps, a rule of those with nothing better to do.  Since experts tend to be very busy professionals, they often cannot keep up their side of the edit war, and they lost by default.

"In my opinion, this at least partly explains why many Wikipedia articles, especially outside more technical and "hard" disciplines, are persistently mediocre.  The cause, I claim, is ultimately that the know-nothings can drive off the know-somethings in the inevitably many content disputes over such "soft" topics.  It seems that the failure of Wikipedia to vest experts with any dicisionmaking authority partly explains the intractability of disputes in Wikipedia and the allegedly observed tendency of expert-crafted articles to deteriorate over time--to descend to the level of mediocrity with which the most persistent Wikipedians feel comfortable, as it were." (p. 64-65).

Lawrence M. Sanger (2009). "The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia." Episteme. Vol 6, p. 64

The key thing from Sanger's article is that this shows the decision-making mechnism behind Wikipedia and it's weakness.  He notes that the belief in anonymity held by Wikipedians only contributes to "radical egalitariansim" that can be very aggresive.  Sanger's Citizendium seeks to address these weakenss by having subject-expert editors that help to settle disputes and by identifying contributors. 

Findings (email survey of 68 media education students):

Survey participants noted

1. there is a need for a new kind of "volutional media literacy" that allows students to "produce, construct, and share and catagorize knowledge, opinions, and experiences, and as well as a changing authority of knowledge" (p. 8).  Volitional literacy is more directed and action-oriented particiaption on the Web. 
2. The use of Web 2.0 applications remains very passive.  Many users do not take advantage of the participatory/constructivist value of 2.0. 
3. The ways that people view and use the Web have changed.  They are less passive and less reliant on experts (more likely to use "social filtering" of watching what others use and recommend).
4. Web content is becoming less static and more dynamic.  There is more and more user-created content, plus socially created content.

They call for a "volitional media literacy" that "implies not only a certain degree of autonomy, but also self-directedness and a conscious feeling of being empowered in the sense that media gives access to various modes, patters, and ways of influencing other individuals, emotionally, rationally, and socially--albiet virtually--when logged on to the Net" (p. 9). 

"Volitional media literacy is a way of overtaking conventional power hierarchies and established prodcution-publishing-dissemination structures.  It is something that enables most (if not all) of us to take individually-determined control of the Web, though at once permitting all of us to cooperate and to collabroate in various ways among and between ourselves" (p. 9). 

From Keikki Kynaslahti, Olli Vesterinen, Lasse Lipponen, Sanna Vahitvuori-Hanninen, Seppo Tella. "Towards Volitional Media Literacy Through Web 2.0." Educational Technology. Oct 2008. P. 3-9.  Vol: 68, No 5.

This a step behind just information literacy.  It calls for action.