Biographies for everyone
Have you ever wanted to create a Wikipedia entry for yourself or a friend? We’ve probably all thought about it at some point, and maybe even acted on our impulses only to find that the Wikipedia community deletes the entries due to insignificance. Certainly, Wikipedia is not in the business of marshaling biographies for just anyone. Enter WikiBios, which aims to break down the barriers and allow everyone to have a biography for display.
WikiBios is all about telling life stories, whether you’re famous or not. In their mission statement, they state that they are
… a revolutionary project that revolves around the idea that everyone in the world, no matter who they are, has a unique and interesting story that deserves to be told. We aim to create a database of biographies for everyone in the world, as told by those who know them best.
This is indeed a lofty goal. The catch is that you can’t write your own biography–only others can write about you. The reason for this, they say, is that your friends can give better insight to your own character. This restriction means that they will need a large user base before biographies are fully fleshed out, which they currently aren’t. The pivotal action they need from their users will be for them to invite their friends, so that they can start filling in biographies.
Overall, WikiBios is an interesting idea that can be the first to usher in an element of social networking into the world of wikis. However, there just isn’t enough users right now to squash the trolls, gaming, and other ugly faces of the wiki system. Some of the “featured” biographies that are linked from the front page are empty. It might be a good idea to handpick the featured bios by hand, at least for the moment.
