Transcript Wikipedia and the Second Renaissance

Collaborative Writing: Wiki and
Wikipedia
Keshava P Subramanya ([email protected])
Roopa Kannan ([email protected])
Today’s Talk
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Quick introduction about the wiki and
collaborative writing idea.
Wikipedia
Two views of how Wikipedia works
Criticisms
Details about the Community
Future
What is collaborative writing?
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Projects where written works are created by multiple
people together (collaboratively) rather than
individually
Some projects are overseen by an editor or editorial
team
Many grow without any top-down oversight.
Computer based collaborative
writing
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Revision control software providing check-in/out
( example subversion, cvs )
Enterprise information portal, Content management
system
SharePoint
Wikis
Some Collab projects
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Novel Twists Online collaborative novel where each of
the 150 pages is written one at a time by a different
person.
co-write.me.uk
The Linux documentation project
OOoAuthors
What is a Wiki
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Essentially a dynamic, collectively authored set of
web pages.
Invented in 1995 by Ward Cunningham to facilitate
online collaboration about programming and design
best practices.
Evolved by the early 2000’s into a way to facilitate all
kinds of online collaboration.
Wiki – Definition
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A wiki (according to Ward Cunningham) is a type of
website that allows users to add and edit content and
is especially suited for constructive collaborative
authoring.
In essence, a wiki is a simplification of the process of
creating HTML pages combined with a system that
records each individual change that occurs over time,
so that at any time, a page can be reverted to any of
its previous states.
As defined in Wikipedia.
How the Wiki Got Its Name
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Wiki is the Hawaiian word meaning “quick”, “fast”, or
“to hasten”.
Wiki-Wiki is the name of the bus line in the Honolulu
International Airport.
How the Wiki Got Its Name
How the Wiki Got Its Name
“Wiki-wiki to the beach.” - Elvis
Presley (as Chad Gates) in the
movie Blue Hawaii (1961). The
line was said with a snap of the
fingers.
Some more …
Wiki (according to UIC Prof. Steve Jones)
Web-based
Interactive
Kollaborative (collaborative)
Iterative
Wiki is sometimes interpreted as the backronym
for “What I Know Is”, which describes the
knowledge contribution, storage and exchange
function.
More Uses for a Wiki
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100 things to do before you die
The world’s largest “How-To” manual – wikiHow
Things to do in Seattle
World-wide travel guide – wikitravel.org
Everything you want to know about VoIP
All about the flu – Flu Wiki
Free Hosting of Wikis
wikihost.org
free-wiki-hosting.com
wikicities.com
educational.blogs.com
duckcomputing.com
pbwiki.com
wikispaces.com
What is Wikipedia?
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Wikipedia is a freely licensed encyclopaedia written
by thousands of volunteers in many languages
Free license allows others to freely copy,
redistribute, and modify work commercially or noncommercially
Founded January 15, 2001
Run by the wikimedia foundation.
wikipedia.org
What is the Wikimedia
Foundation?
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Non-profit foundation
Its 4th Quarter 2005 costs were $321,000 USD, with hardware
making up almost 60% of the budget
Where does it get the money ?
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Aim: to distribute a free encyclopaedia to every single person on the
planet in their own language
Wikipedia and its sister projects
wikimediafoundation.org
Advantages of Freely Licensed
Content
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GNU Free Documentation Licence
Remains non-proprietary
Enhances the popularity of Wikipedia
Decreases individual sense of ownership
Increases a sense of shared ownership
Free Software
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MediaWiki is GPL
Uses all free software on the website
GNU/Linux
Apache
MySQL
Php
How big is Wikipedia?
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English Wikipedia is largest and has over 260 million
words
English Wikipedia larger than Britannica and Microsoft
Encarta combined
In 15 months the publicly distributed compressed
database dumps may reach 1 terabyte total size
How big is Wikipedia Globally?
Total more than 5 million articles!
 English – 1,412,000 articles
 German – 172,000 articles
 Japanese – 87,000 articles
 French – 66,000 articles
 Swedish –53,000 articles
 Over 5 million across 250 languages
 19 with >10,000. 52 with >1000
(statistics could be dated)
How popular is Wikipedia?
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According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia (ranked ~ 20th) is more
popular than the websites of:
IBM
Paypal
Open Directory Project
Geocities
~400 Million page views monthly
Wikipedia vs. Britannica
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AP article on CNN website
This study was challenged by Encyclopædia
Britannica, who described it as "fatally flawed.“
source www.wikipedia.org
Wikimedia Projects
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Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Wikibooks
Wikiquote
Wikispecies
Wikimedia Commons
Wikinews
Wikinews
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Community edited news along the same principles of
Wikipedia
Fairly new project
Aim of the project
wikinews.org
Wikimedia’s Hardware
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30+ servers
Squid caching servers in front to serve cached
objects quickly
Apache/PHP webservers in the middle
Database backend (MySql)
MediaWiki
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MediaWiki is one of many wiki engines
Collaborative software that allows users to add or
edit content
Primarily developed for Wikipedia from 2002 onwards
Scalable and multilingual
Free license
MediaWiki features
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Quality control features (versioning)
Editing features (simple markup)
Community features (talk pages, profiles, access
levels)
Page History
DEMO
DEMO
Interlanguage linking
Criticism Workshop 
Hints:
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Can Wikipedia Content Be Trusted?
Systematic bias
Reliability of Information
Technology requirement
Can Wikipedia Content Be
Trusted?
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Review processes
Partly post-moderation, partly reactive moderation
Linking to particular revisions
Development of a stable version
Free license allows you to modify it
Reliability of Information
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Criticism
The community contribution
approach allows for too much false
information.
Without an expert background a
person can not present an unbiased,
factual position.
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Rebuttal
The open source approach allows
for new information to be added on
a daily basis.
The articles that exist on Wikipedia
are a group effort where any wrong
information can be edited.
The group editing also lets people
combine information to get a broad
background.
Reliability of Information
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Criticism
The large quantity of daily
information added prevents proper
fact checking.
The daily edits allow too many
mistakes to go unnoticed or be
reintroduced.
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Rebuttal
Wikipedia does maintain a staff
whose sole purpose is to review and
edit articles.
Each day articles are viewed by
thousands of people, any one
person can implement changes to
correct mistakes.
Printed encyclopedias can not fix
errors once released, while
Wikipedia is always able to make
corrections.
Systematic Bias
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Criticism
Systematic bias exposes WIkipedia
to unbalanced amounts of
information.
People are more likely to write
about topics that interest them as
opposed to more historically
significant topics.
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Rebuttal
Past requests for information have
been met with quick action.
These responses have created huge
increases in the amount of coverage
of topics.
Wikipedia also includes a inquiry
page. Any topic can be requested
and the Wiki community is quick to
respond.
Technology Requirements
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Criticism
Wikipedia faces technology
constraints as an online
encyclopedia.
A reader must have Internet access
at all times.
The possibility of tech failure on the
Wikipedia’s end also presents
problems.
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Rebuttal
The technology constraints
constantly decrease as the world
becomes more advanced.
The student population has almost
100% Internet access due to school
resources and class requirements.
Latest Information
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Wikipedia is built on the belief that collaboration
among users will improve articles over time.
The software of Wikipedia allows for rapid updating
of existing articles, as well as constant introduction of
new topics.
Quick Vandalism Response
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Most vandalisms on Wikipedia are reverted within five
minutes.
There is a record of change made to every page and
Wikipedia volunteers watch the list of recent
changes.
If a user constantly vandalizes pages of Wikipedia,
individuals can be blocked and pages can be locked
down.
Neutral Point of View
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Three sides to everything, your version, my version,
and the truth
Editors are asked to maintain a neutral point of view
when writing for Wikipedia.
When editing wars break out and neutral points of
view are not maintained, Wikipedia volunteers usually
remove the information posted.
Click here
Two Views of Wikipedia
•Emergent
•Community
of thoughtful users
Emergent
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Thousands of individual
users who don’t know each
other each contribute a little
bit
Out of this emerges a
coherent body of work
A Community?
Berlin
London
Genoa
A dedicated group of a few
hundred volunteers who know
each other and work to guarantee
the quality and integrity of the
content.
Implications
Emergent Model
 Need reputation mechanisms
like Ebay, Slashdot
 Users are tiny, have no
power
Community Model
 Reputation is a natural
outcome of human
interactions
 Users are powerful, must be
respected
80/10 Rule
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Counting only logged in users, and even excluding
some prominent approved bot users
10 percent of all users make 80% of all edits
5 percent of all users make 66% of edits
Half of all edits are made by just 2 1/2 percent of all
users
Edits by Anons
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Controversial, intriguing
Yes, you can edit this page
Without logging in!
Anonymous ip numbers can edit Wikipedia
But these edits make up a total of around 18% of all
edits, with some evidence of a downward trend over
time
Edits across namespaces
Articles 85%
 Talk pages 8%
 User Page 3%
 User Talk Pages 4%
These percentages are stable in 2003
And 2004
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Wikipedia is a community…
•How
does it work?
•Who are the users?
•How do they self-regulate?
Many types of users
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As in any society, there are many types of people -these types are reflected in editing patterns
Individual users may not fit cleanly into a single type,
but thinking about editing patterns is a helpful way to
understand the community
Broad Types
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Worker Bees, POV pushers
Police, Judges
Controversy lovers - Moths
Pseudo-users - Sock puppets, Vandals
Extra-Wiki - Mailing list, IRC, Board activities,
Developers
Bees
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The most important users at
Wikipedia
But may go unnoticed unless
special attention is given
Generalists
Specialists
Proof-readers
Question: What attracts the bees??
Sock Puppet
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Not all sock puppets are bad
Privacy
The chance to start over
But when used wrongly, is
one of the worst offenses
Moth
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Drawn to flames
Not necessarily a bad
thing - some people thrive
on controversy
Vandal
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Less of a problem for the community than most people
assume
Vandalism is easy to revert, and blocking vandals
(temporarily) slows them down and takes the fun away
Outside the Wiki
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Developers - coders and system admins
IRC Channels
Mailing lists
Wikipedia Governance
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A confusing but workable mix of
Consensus
Democracy
Aristocracy
Monarchy
Community Challenges
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How can such a large community scale?
– Through software features
– Through policy (mediation, arbitration)
– Through an atmosphere of love and respect
Community Self-Regulation
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Quality control features: recent changes,
watchlists, related changes, page histories, user
contributions lists
Community features: talk pages, user profiles,
access levels, user-to-user email, message
notification.
International Community
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Interlanguage linking of articles
Choice of language interface
Global newsletter: Quarto
“Translation of the week”
Conclusion
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Wikipedia is a community
Automated and artificial Slashdot-style
reputation metrics are not needed and may
not be desirable
Achieving quality levels equalling or
exceeding traditional publishing models can
be expected without “emergent” magic
Credits
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http://www.wikipedia.org and related sites
Some slides adapted from
– Jimmy Wales President, Wikimedia Foundation Wikipedia Founder
– Prof. Burks Oakley II Prof of E.C.E University of Illinois