Social Software, or Why Would I Want to Consult an Encyclopedia that Would Have Me as a Contributor?

In the last four years, broad, collaborative authoring (for example, Wikipedia), collection building (for example, September 11 Digital Archive and Hurricane Digital Memory Bank) and organization of information (for example, folksonomies) have emerged as forms of social computing. Advocates champion the democratic nature of the collaboration. Critics decry the lack of provenance and thus trustworthiness of the information gathered in this way. Clearly, though, the technology and techniques can support both democratic collaboration and the collaboration of experts. Such technology and techniques offer an opportunity to advance the application of computing to teaching and research beyond the margins.