Transcript [[Wikipedia 101]] - University of California, Davis

[[Wikipedia 101]]
[[en:user:Phoebe_Ayers]]
[[California Library Association]]
[[November 13, 2006]]
Part 1: the past
What is it?
How did it get so big?!
Why are we talking about this?
What is it?
• “The free encyclopedia”
But also:
• Related to wiki-dictionaries, textbooks and
citizen journalism
• A place to find open-source media
• A reference desk
• A huge community
• One of the world’s most popular websites
• A site with a mission
Wikipedia basics
• GNU/GFDL licensed content: free as in
beer and free as in speech
• Open to all and editable by anyone
• Edit anonymously or with an account
• Funded mostly (>80%) by
individual donations
– Tiny budget and 3 paid employees
Why is Wikipedia
special?
• Multilingualism/multiculturalism
• People are using it
• Astonishing size
• It’s remarkably good
• Fundamental change to information
production, dissemination, and
authority:
• You’ve never seen anything like this
before, ever
Why?
“Imagine a world in which every single
person is given free access to the
sum of all human knowledge…
That’s what we’re doing.”
-- Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia is “more
popular” than…
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•
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•
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•
•
Ask Jeeves
Altavista
Google UK, Japan, and other local Googles
Amazon.com
CNN, BBC and the NY Times
Slashdot.org
Britannica.com (100x more popular)
AOL
A sense of size…
• 1.5 Million+ articles in English
•
•
•
•
6M+ pages in English
20,000+ active users, 2.5m accounts
Over 5M articles total (all languages)
Average article has been edited 14
times+
• 24,000+ requests a second
for all projects
Based on WP:Statistics, Erik Zachte’s scripts and Samuel Klein’s estimations of Dec 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:English-language-wikipedia-.png
The future
• Wikipedia 1.0
• Verifiability
• Is Wikipedia sustainable?
Wikipedia and
Librarians
• Talk to your patrons
– Gateway source
– Not uniformly reviewed
– May be inaccurate
• Check cataloging
• Just another source…
Evaluation
criteria
• Edit history – how many, who
• References
• Text style – wikified? Follows formatting
conventions?
• Verifiable?
What can an
info pro do?
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•
•
•
Edit
Add sources!
Categorize
Provide input …
– For instance,
citation format proposal
How?
• Create an account
• Dive in…
– Start with topics you love
– Participate in clean-up or fact-check projects
– Tap into the community
– Be bold!
Beautiful things…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activation_energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_Pa_In
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_turtle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tanganyika
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate
Questions?
Phoebe Ayers
[email protected]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Phoebe Ayers