Collaborative and Distance Communications

So I have very limited experience with both of these things, but this will still be good I promise. For this weeks post I think I will focus/rant about the first things that I thought about with these topics, Wikipedia, Skype, and Spotify collaborative playlists.
1: Wikipedia. Wikipedia is pure gold to start an idea for an essay, or to just quickly look something up. I think that most students simply misuse this wonderful resource. While we all know that you don't cite Wikipedia in an academic essay, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't use it at all. I personally use it to get a base knowledge of a topic that I am searching, then there are sources that are linked in the wikipage! I then go to these sources that are usually something that I can actually use and cite in my paper, if not then it still gives me direction on where I need to be taking my research. I think that this is a tool that is misused because people take it for too much value (they think it is an actual academic source) or they don't use it at all.
Another cool thing about Wikipedia, is the Wikipedia game. This game is played when a group of people that have access to Wikipedia (whether through laptops or phones) and as a collective you decide on a wikipedia page that you all want to get to. The more random and obscure the better. Then for the first round you pick a page to start on. At the same time everyone starts pushing on hotlinks that are in the each wikipage to get to what was decided in the beginning. The first person to get to the page first wins. Once you have finished the first round then everybody just starts pushing links from the current page they are on. So for example, the group decides to find the wikipedia page for Utah State University, but they have to start on the wiki apple then click on links from there. The first person to get a link to Utah State University wins.
2: Skype. This is probably the one that I have had the least experience with, but I think that Skype is a really clunky app. Often times I find myself jealous of apple users because of factime, and I am sure that google has something that is similar that might work better. I think that skype (or any other platform that has the same capacity) has revolutionized what is possible. From keeping up with friends/family that are miles apart, to the business world, and even revolutionizing ways that collaborations happen in so many ways! I really appreciate it cause then I can visually see my nephew and niece growing up when I am not there to see it myself.
3: Lastly, Spotify collaboration playlists. I know that this platform isn't fully a collaboration platform, but it is the first thing that I thought about and I would argue that it is. At my work we can play our own music so I have made a work approps playlist that we can all add our music to. This way we can all add our music and have a good mix. There are so many music collaborations that are happening and while it is on a much smaller scale than on wikipedia or anything else, I still think that it is pretty amazing.