VGI - Meh

Look I believe in the concept, but I’m so sick and tired of these freaking terms. Personally I think folks use the term VGI to segregate themselves from the community at large. I mean look at this list of participants at a workshop late last year.

Does it bother anyone else that a workshop meeting on social cartography, limited to 40 persons is elitist? This infatuation with VGI is becoming unhealthy to the direction we all want GIS and Geography to move. Why waste efforts down a side street when the main street geospatial crowd is working so hard to get more open. This VGI fad is just more of that University” mentality that drags down innovation.

Update Fantomplanet says:

You take VGI for what it is. Someone has to sort that crap out half the time……. I asked Goodchild how his concept isn’t any different that the stuff the wiki-blog crowd is trying to sort out. It isn’t.

Well if Wikipedia is a goal of the concept, then VGI is a non-starter. The world needs less, not more gatekeepers and the whole Wiki concept is based on editors deciding what is right and wrong, not the community. Just because you can edit something doesn’t mean that it is collaborative. Wikipedia is flawed and cult-like and if that is the direction of Geography, count me out.


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Date
March 13, 2008