Mamapedia: New parenting resource

A cross between Google and Wikipedia for parents, Mamapedia just makes sense. And so did its CEO, Artie Wu, when I asked him how he came to create the two-month-old site.
"We have two kids [3 and 9], and when my wife, a doctor, and I were new parents, we were the first in our circle of friends who had kids. Like all parents, we'd struggle with the kinds of questions you aren't going to ask a pediatrician - like what kind of stroller to buy, or should we have car seats in both cars so we don't have to constantly move them back and forth?"

With questions like that, Wu said, you want to ask the experts: "other parents at exactly the same stage as you in parenting." And remembering back to when my kids were little, I heard him when he said you also want a range of views to choose from. "There are no right answers" for everybody, he said.

So it makes sense to allow users to type a question into the search box, as at Wikipedia or Google, and turn up a whole bunch of answers, with plenty of opinion but no judgment. Wu says moms "don't want to be judged," and I think he's right. Better to have opinions on what to do than on what *you* do as a parent.

I asked Wu how Mamapedia's different from other parenting sites. He said they generally "fall into two buckets: slick, professionally written sites with a lot of 'official answers' and dos and don'ts from experts and then the other end of the spectrum: social-networking-like sites for moms with chat and discussion boards. They provide a great social experience, but it's more about meeting fellow moms and bonding with them - like C-section moms, July-baby moms." He should know, since his company's other project is Mamasource, local online communities for parents in all 50 states.

"We wanted to create something in between: a Google for moms, if you will," he said - "the real scoop from real moms with real-world wisdom."

I obviously appreciate that, because it's the premise on which we built ConnectSafely.org, a forum for parents to share family lessons learned on kids' use of tech and the Net.

I asked him why not a Papapedia? Are dads welcome too? "We're totally open to dads too, but there's something special about the way moms help each other and communicate with each other that's unique ... they really have a culture of sharing around these topics."

Wikipedia: A model for digital citizenship training?

When educators and homework helpers think of Wikipedia.org, they probably shake their heads over its monopoly on students' encyclopedia look-ups (see "Victim of Wikipedia: Microsoft to shut down Encarta"). But think of it in a different light: as digital-citizenship teaching tool. A recent commentary in the New York Times compares Wikipedia - with the more than 2.8 million collaboratively edited articles in its English version alone - to a vibrant city, with its population density, high drama, diversity of views, and unpredictability. Like a big city, writer Noam Cohen suggests, one of Wikipedia's "founding principles" is "Assume good faith." How can people do that? Consider this:

"Wikipedia encourages contributors to mimic the basic civility, trust, cultural acceptance and self-organizing qualities familiar to any city dweller. Why don’t people attack each other on the way home? Why do they stay in line at the bank? Why don’t people guffaw at the person with blue hair? The police may be an obvious answer. ["Police," where unruly adolescent behavior is concerned, could be replaced sometimes with "school administrators" or "parents."] But this misses the compact among city dwellers. Since their creation, cities have had to be accepting of strangers - no judgments - and residents learn to be subtly accommodating, outward looking." Good citizens as stakeholders in the smooth functioning and well-being of the community, as signers-on to a kind of social compact. But transparency, or accountability, helps too. Every editorial move an editor makes in Wikipedia is documented and can be looked up at times of controversy. Wikipedia is, of course, a wiki - so just think of the value of wikis to learning all kinds of subjects, including citizenship in real and virtual communities!