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Interview Looks at How and Why Wikipedia Works
driehle writes to tell us that he recently had a chance to interview Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko. All three are leading Wikipedia practitioners in the English, German, and Japanese Wikipedias and related projects. The interview focuses on how Wikipedia works and why these three practitioners believe it will keep working.
Wikipedia is of course an excellent resource. However I'd wish that people would also have an eye for Wikimedia Commons, a giant multimedia library to which everyone can upload files, all perfectly categorized. More importantly, every file that's in there can be linked to by Wikipedia.
From the help page:
The Wikimedia Commons (or "Commons") is a repository of free images, sound and other multimedia files. Uploaded files can be used as local files by other projects on the Wikimedia servers, including Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wiktionary.
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One Wikipedia contributor, David Gerard, did a nice job of summarizing Wikipedia's dirty little secret of how it works: 'On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs'. Once someone establishes himself as being reliable, trustworthy, comptentent, 'etc, they tend to get handed a lot of responsability in short order. A relatively small number of people tend to wear many hats. (Myself included - I'm an administrator, burecreat, arbitrator, checkuser-weilder, member of the communications and press committees, handler of email via OTRS, 'etc)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
For everyone who thinks, and says BEWARE THE WIKI! for it is not academically sound. Thre's nothing sound about academia. There are as many lecturers who believe they know more than they do, as there are wiki contributors.
Because you can - or because you should?
You need to read this.
As for "being crushed under its own weight", the fact is, it's working now. It has been working well for a number of years now. That doesn't mean it will keep working indefinitely, but your prediction (correct me if I'm wrong...) doesn't seem to be based off anything in particular.
"there is increasingly a distinction between 'normal' authors and 'high-end' authors who are explicitly trying to get their articles 'featured'."
Wikipedia, just like many other community sites, has some elements of a game. This can be both a good and a bad thing. The good thing is, this sort of rewards usually encourage more people to participate in the site by creating new content. The bad thing is, more and more people will eventually come to realize that it's just a game, and start taking advantage of this -- and of other people -- in order to 'win' (on Slashdot, this could mean Karma or Friend whoring). This, I think, can seriously hinder them from reaching (or even working towards) their goal of creating an encyclopedia "of the highest possible quality". We won't see more incorrect information because of this, but we might start seeing (or not seeing) more and more behind-the-scenes fighting, which could eventually lead to many people leaving the 'game'.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Wikipedia is fairly balanced and accurate when it comes to topics that interest a lot of people. When there is a potentially controversial article like a biography of some well know politican an ideological debate or something of that sort there are a lot of editors representing various views and blocking most extreme ones out. However when there is a relativley obscure and exotic topic a bunch of cynical people can just about write any crap they write.
I actually personally noticed a very curious effect. Articles relating to my native Ukraine are constantly assulted with rabid natonalistic Russian point of view, the vast majority of it comming from a small bunch of trolls. The few Ukrainian are simply outnumbered by the aggressive nationalist Russians editing and the few Brittons or Americans unable to notice the bias. On the other hand the coverage of Ukraine related topics on the Russian language wikipedia, although of course with a clear bias, is actually somewhat more neutral as there are simply more normal people interested in the topic and somewhat familiar with it but without a malicous agenda.
I was just reading this:
DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism by Jaron Lanier.
While acknowledging Wikipedia's usefuless, criticizes its exalted status among the digitally connected.
I've been fiddling (my blog) with wiki's to see if they can work at work to tackle knowledge management problems that I'm experiencing in a large organisation. I came to the following points why wiki's can work there:
* They center work on a topic around a group of webpages
* They are easy to use. Socialtext is just a double click on a page
* They open up information to the entire organization through simple searches
* Information entered into them for the benefit of the project group is immediately also of benefit to others. So when doing my job, I unintended also help others
* They enable sending e-mail to and from pages, enabling e-mail repositories and lists of useful links on the relevant page.
* By sending an e-mail to the relevant project page, you add both metadata to the page and to the e-mail.
* They are free form, but can be structured
* If one co-worker doesn't update his page, because of time constraints or just being dead, others can.
* They can be about such highly critical information as: Best restaurants in Berlin, travel suggestions to Kiev, the latest law and its implications, biographies of important people, a list of insultants, the next project meeting or the office Christmas party, without requiring a central command and control structure.
* They don't assume where knowledge is in the organization.
For a review of Jotspot, Socialtext and Wetpaint see here
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True, but I never claimed that anonymous people are inherently jerks as the AC did, ergo I see no hypocracy in my actions. Whereas I found the GP to be somewhat funny - blasting anonymous wiki editors/trolls while himself remaining anon. OTOH, he at least provided a citation, which is much more than most wiki vandals :-)
/. community, I am not anonymous - I am known. I have karma, stated views, a posting history, etc; everything that is relevant to /. is accessable. The fact that the name I am known by is an internet pseudonym is hardly relevant here. The only thing I hide is my e-mail, and that's because the account I use for slashdot is meant to be spam free. There is a minor difference in accountability between logged in posters and ACs.
Also, within the limited confines of the
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
If you don't read the whole article it's worth noting that there is mention made of, and a link to an interesting page on the cultural differences between the English and German wikipedias.
Also, I forgot to mention Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
"Wikipedia articles are usually very link rich. Explore these links for more information and hints for "proper" references"
/. has been for me for years.
Link rich...great phrase! And that is exactly what
Some of the most intense differences of opinion on/. are often armed with links from multiple disciplines, multiple countries, radically different perspectives based on everything from technique to culture.
Follow the links, RTFA's and cull, cull, cull! That is research and has taught me more then any prepared textbook or ridged institutional policy.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
Yes, and that cynicism and perception is based on the amount of damage that that small number of people can do. And they can do it precisely _because_ the rest of the people are nice and believe in being nice, so you can get away with doing a _lot_ of harm before someone gets over their niceness to stop you once and for all.
Cute, but you're massively underestimating the kind of damage someone can do if they don't give a shit about society working. At the risk of tempting Goodwin, although in this case it's an on-topic example, look at WW2 to see what destruction a small group of psychopaths can cause if they can get in a position to. (Hitler was diagnosed a psychopath during WW1. I don't know if the others were ever diagnosed, but some, e.g., Himmler, show consistent sociopathic behaviour.)
Other smaller scale examples include stuff like the gangster mobs in the 30's, employers shooting employees on strike also back then, etc. Or in the non-violent spectrum, see the scams ranging all the way to Enron and the like. Don't underestimate the extent of damage and death a few people can cause if they end up in a position where they can expect to get away with it.
In a nutshell _that_ is why we needed laws, police, punishment, etc. Because nice people are easy prey for ruthless assholes. So at one point society decided to make a set of rules and a police force and, basically, say, "Ok, these are the rules, if you refuse to live by them, we _will_ throw you in a dungeon cell."
And to return to Wikipedia, due to its very nature, it needs to deal not only with "assholes", but also with the kind of nerd who isn't "bad" as such, but has to have the last word and be perceived as "right", no matter what. There are a ton of people who aren't into destruction and defacement as such, but built their whole self-respect on being right about _everything_. If he's read somewhere that the Aztecs conquered China (probably in a parody about Civ 4), and doubly so if he's said it once, he'll devote any disproportionate amount of energy to having the last word about that and establishing his authority on the subject. It's not that he's "bad", it's that in his mind he's by definition right, thus if you disaggree with him you must be the ignorant simpleton.
And with the fanboy or zealot on an ideological crusade to save the wold. And no means or disinformation are too much for such a "noble" goal.
And with the kind of joker who isn't inherently "bad", but thinks he's funny and you should stop taking yourself so seriously. It's the kind who'll write a whole article about cloning didgeridoos or insert a paragraph about how Bush shot Kennedy, just because he thinks he's funny. In fact, he thinks he's hillarious. The whole world should stumble upon his gems of pure comedy and laugh their arse off.
And with the paid shill or PR guy who isn't in it to be an "asshole", but to sell you a bottle of snake oil for good money. They already have no remorse in creating "news" for more traditional media. In fact, at least in America, _most_ news you read are just veiled PR campaigns. What makes you think they won't do the same pollution on Wikipedia, if it makes a buck?
Etc, etc, etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
For many things a traditional encyclopedia is useless even as a first search, because it quite simply has no entry at all.
Wikipedia is most commonly used when you hear something, and want a quick ivdea what that's all about. You won't find out what RFC1777 is in Britannica, infact you're quite likely to not even figure out what an 'RFC' is. Brittanica also can't tell you how many people live in Austevoll or what, exactly Draupnir is.
A incomplete and imperfect article beats NO article any time of day. Usually, once you've read what Wikipedia has to say on a subject, you also know enough to have some idea where to search for more detail.
I generally use wiki as a reference text for something i already know, but can't completely remember. Something like the derivation of a commonly used function, or an exact date for an event etc. I wouldn't use it for more specialised "professional" information (i'm a research scientist). Basically i treat it like an encyclopedia rather than an authoritative reference text. It has value in that context, but i agree with your point that in other ways it doesn't.
Less-than-authoritative because of its changing nature? Well guess what - print does as well. Ever notice that for many non-scientific books, there's an 'errata' list? Ever notice that some books are in their 10th edition, with no apparent real change over the 1st edition, except when you read really, really closely and notice that a 1,000 was supposed to be a 1.000? Worse yet, ever read scientific journals, say 1998 editions, that refer to a 1994 edition article as having a minor error? And how the heck is somebody supposed to find that - just by reading through every copy of that journal to make sure that from 1994 through 2006 there's been no corrections to that article? (real life example, it was a minor OBO error that nobody caught until people started applying the algorithm to huge numbersets.. nobody who had read through the algorithm, implemented it, etc. spotted it)
Sure, scientific journals first enjoy peer review, then editorial review, etc. But mistakes -still- happen - at least when it's a wikipedia article, it can be correct right there and then, and nobody - with any luck - will have to see the error ever again unless they go through the page's history.
Wikipedia would still benefit from peer review, authoritative sources/authors, etc. and so I can dig the 'frowned upon' part. But I hardly feel that use of wikipedia should be penalized any more than citing the professor's own papers should grant you a bonus.
On many subjects -- especially various historical figures -- Wikipedia IS Britannica. After all, how much of the life story of King Henry II has changed since 1911, which IIRC is the date on the open-source Britannica Wikipedia uses.
About contemporary people and the like, Wikipedia is often far superior to Britannica, due to its currency. Of course, there can be a lot of spin in those articles, as there are still people alive and in many cases editing Wikipedia who benefit directly from that spin. But it's still better than no article at all.
On math, science, and the like, it's a good quick reminder of what other topics and buzzwords to search on might be. That often makes it a great place to start.
But it is NOT authoritative, and regarding it as such can lead to all sorts of weirdnesses. For example, when I was blogging for Computerworld, I was annoyed that almost every post by every blogger was being listed in the "enterprise applications" category. When I complained to the online editor, he said that he regarded Wikipedia as authoritative, and pointed me at their definition, which indeed was ridiculously expansive. So I went and edited it to something more reasonable, and told him. He then circulated email to all the bloggers saying Wikipedia's definition of "enterprise applications" had changed, and since that was authoritative, their usage should conform to the new definition.
I am NOT making this story up, nor significantly distorting it. (And fortunately, he's an anomaly at a publication that in my experience otherwise has smart, knowledgeable, journalistically admirable editors.)
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
Does that mean they will shed MySQL? Sorry if it sounds like trolling, but quite often Wikipedia problems (and problems at other very high load sites such as /. itself, my email provider etc) are traced back to MySQL. Or is MySQL getting so much better so soon?
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