I get a weekly digest of Wikipedia activity. It’s Weeklypedia. It reflects a very busy space: “this week, 116,760 authors made 757,848 changes to 324,023 different articles.”

The #1 busiest site this week was the list of most-liked Instagram posts. Visiting sites like these are part of how I diversify my portfolio signal. I don’t think that unless I explored actively that I would ever run across these gems. Much the same with my email newsletter. They both (among many others) bring me into the world of folks whom I never might have known.

My gut response to this list of most-liked Instagram posts? Why are these the most-liked?

For example, at #1 is ‘the egg’. Why most popular? Isn’t that what most-liked means? The first reason that comes to my mind is that Kylie Jenner was first so someone got the idea to bring them down at least one peg. Celebrity IS the coin of the attention economy. There is a web page about the history of this meme on Wikipedia. Other than anti-celebrity…go figure.

I decided that this might make a very interesting lesson about curiosity and the net. I wanted to record with Webrecorder and archive this original Wikipedia list along with a few of the links radiating out. The idea is to create a single, shared space that all the students in my class might refer to and discuss in class. Perhaps we can learn how to navigate Wikipedia better, learn how to archive the web, show curiosity, and learn how to share out that curiosity. Or as I remarked a few posts ago, become the “serendipity enhancer” in chief.

 

The archive for all the links I wanted to share are in the embed just below this.  Click inside the embed box, then navigate around.  If you want to view the entire collection of links, even offline, go here.

I also saved this archive to the Internet archive.  I have tried to embed it below, but it is showing as an empty box in my WordPress text window, so if it doesn’t show up here is the link for it as well.

Last, I think a bit of ‘modelling’ for my readers and students is in order.  Here is a screencast to show where this site leads me.  It is an example of how I think out loud, not THE example.  These screencasts are embarrassing on many levels: I hate the sound of my own voice, I know others are second-guessing constantly, I am criticizing myself as I speak and noting what a second pass might bring.  Matters not.  Only care about putting it out there for others.  I will post this below as a YouTube video, but it may not be up for awhile. I live in the rurality and have molasses-in-winter-slow-DSL.  If it ain’t there, just come back later.