Transcript Document

[[Wikipedia]]
/past
/present
/future…
[[en:user:Phoebe_Ayers]]
Wikipedia: the past
What is it?
How did it get so big?!
Why are we talking about this?
What is it?
• An encyclopedia
But also:
• A repository of open-source media
• Testing ground for wikis
• Related to wiki-dictionaries, textbooks and
citizen journalism
• A reference desk
• A huge community
• One of the world’s most popular websites
• A philosophical problem for information
science…
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
Wikipedia is “more
popular” than…
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ask Jeeves
Altavista
Google Canada (and other local Googles)
NY Times
Imdb.com
Slashdot.org
Britannica.com (100x more popular)
AOL (passed Jan. 2006)
A sense of size…
• 960,000+ articles in English
•
•
•
•
3M+ pages in English
20,000+ active users, 800k+ accounts
Over 2M articles total
Average article has been edited 15
times+
• 2000+ requests a second
Based on Erik Zachte’s scripts and Samuel Klein’s estimations – Dec 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:English-language-wikipedia-.png
What’s it good for, anyway?
• “Gateway source”
• When you know nothing about a topic
• Casual information needs
What topics is it
good for?
•
•
•
•
Current topics
Popular culture
Computers, math and (some) science
Try it!
Wikipedia: the present
How does it work?
Who’s in charge?
Will it bite?!
How do articles
get written?
• Someone starts it
• Someone else checks it
• A (possibly third) party edits it…
Article Criteria
•
•
•
•
Notable (encyclopedic)
Not vanity
Not duplication
Community consensus…
Edit wars… and other things
that go boom
Predictable vandalism… posted and reverted the same minute (10:31)
Lots of community debate …
• “Organized POV pushing, IMO, will be the major threat to
Wikipedia in the upcoming decade - much more serious than
scalability, server issues, or the threat of litigation.”
• “If Congress has so much time that they can surf, edit, delete, or
otherwise modify community contributed content, then they should
have no problem editing, deleting, or modifying poilcy such as the
Patriot Act. …”
• “I'm in favor of banning the entire IP range for both House and
Senate ... These people's salaries are paid with our tax dollars.”
• “I don't think the all the staffers should be barred when only some
of them are causing problems, …”
• “Most congressional staffers are intelligent people who are
perfectly capable of making valuable contributions to Wikipedia. If
we assumed good faith about them, as we do for other
contributors, and tried to understand any concerns they have about
Wikipedia articles, this wouldn't even be an issue. … “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/United_States_Congress
• It was a waste of energy and an error in
judgment on the part of my staff to have
allowed any time to be spent on updating
my Wikipedia entry.
– Marty Meehan
http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3444567
Who’s in charge?
• “Wikipedia's present power structure is
a mix of anarchic, despotic, democratic,
republican, technocratic, and even
plutocratic elements”
Meta:Power structure
Who’s in charge?
Answer: this guy
Wikimedia Foundation
Governed by Board of Directors
(5 positions: 1 permanent (Jimmy Wales) 2 Bomis reps, 2 community reps)
Foundation coordinates official (volunteer) positions:
Fundraising, legal, technical development, press, etc
MediaWiki (software)
And the projects:
Wiktionary Wikinews Wikipedia Wikiversity Wikiquote Wikisource Commons
Local chapters: English (en); German (de); Italian (it); etc.: 215 languages in total
Foundation
board
Arbcom
Developers, stewards, bureaucrats
English-language
Wikipedia
Meritocracy
(who’s respected)
Admins
Long-term users, lots of contribs, heavy community participation
Logged-in users with some contributions
less community participation
Anonymous IP edits
Vandals, trolls, sockpuppets
Lots of communication…
• On-wiki
– Talk pages
– Project pages
– Meta, Community areas and votes
• Off-wiki
– Email lists
– IRC
Why does it work?
Does it bite?
Wikipedia culture
and principles
Official policies – based on:
The 5 pillars of Wikipedia:
– Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
– Neutral-Point-Of-View (NPOV)
– Free content
– Be bold, but stay cool
– No firm rules!
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
Wikipedia culture, cont.
• Hacker and open source culture
• {{sofixit}}
“We make the Internet not suck” – Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia: the future
What’s the future hold?
What can I do?
“…if someone is going to slander me horribly
on the Web, I'd rather that he chose an
editable medium."
– Bertrand Meyer,
“Defense and Illustration of Wikipedia”
http://se.ethz.ch/~meyer/publications/wikipedia/wikipedia.txt
What does it mean:
• When “authorship” disappears?
• When the world’s largest reference work
challenges copyright?
• When millions of users don’t appear to
care about “accuracy”… as long as it’s
“good enough”?
• When “free information for all” becomes a
cause?
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?
•
•
•
•
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!
Questions?
Phoebe Ayers:
UC Davis,
Physical Sciences & Engineering Library
phoebe.ayers @ gmail.com
Handout:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phoebe Ayers